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BY 

ARTHUR G. BENSON 

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE 
CAMBRIDGE 

THE UPTON LETTERS 

FROM A COLLEGE 
WINDOW 

BESIDE STILL WATERS 

THE ALTAR FIRE 



THE ALTAR FIRE 



BY 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPtlER BENSON 

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE*ctLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 

AUTHOR OF " THE GPTON LETTERS," ETC. 



Cecidit autem ignis Domini^ et voravit holocaustutn 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zbc 1RnicKcrbocF;cr press 
1907 



LIBRARY of CONGRESsI 
Two CoDles Received 

OCr 10 1907 

Copyrjirht Entry 
SS4^ n/c. Ho 



'A 



Copyright, 1907 

By 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 



Ube Itnfclierbocltei: prcea, t^ew ]|?orfi 



PREFACE 

It will perhaps be said, and truly felt, that the 
following is a morbid book. No doubt the sub- 
ject is a morbid one, because the book deliberately 
gives a picture of a diseased spirit. But a patho- 
logical treatise, dealing with cancer or paralysis, is 
not necessarily morbid, though it may be studied 
in a morbid mood. We have learnt of late years, 
to our gain and profit, to think and speak of 
bodily ailments as natural phenomena, not to slur 
over them and hide them away in attics and bed- 
rooms. We no longer think of insanity as de- 
moniacal possession, and we no longer lock up 
people with diseased brains in the secluded apart- 
ments of lonely houses. But we still tend to think 
of the sufferings of the heart and soul as if they 
were unreal, imaginary, hypochondriacal things, 
which could be cured by a little resolution and 
by intercourse with cheerful society ; and by this 



IV Preface 

foolish and secretive reticence we lose both sym- 
pathy and help. I once heard old Mrs. Procter, 
the friend of Carlyle and Lamb, a brilliant and 
somewhat stoical lady, say to a youthful relative 
of a sickly habit, with stern emphasis, ' ' Never tell 
people how you are ! They don't want to know." 
Up to a certain point this is shrewd and whole- 
some advice. One does undoubtedly keep some 
kinds of suffering in check by resolutely minimis- 
ing them. But there is a significance in suffering 
too. It is not all a clumsy error, a well-meaning 
blunder. It is a deliberate part of the constitution 
of the world. 

Why should we wish to conceal the fact that 
we have suffered, that we suffer, that we are likely 
to suffer to the end ? There are multitudes of 
people in like case ; the very confession of the 
fact may help others to endure, because one of 
the darkest miseries of suffering is the horrible 
sense of isolation that it brings. And if this book 
casts the least ray upon the sad problem — a ray of 
the light that I have learned to recognise is truly 
there — I shall be more than content. There is no 
morbidity in suffering, or in confessing that one 
suffers. Morbidity only begins when one ac- 
quiesces in suffering as being incurable and 



Preface v 

inevitable ; and the motive of this book is to 
show that it is at once curative and curable, a 
very tender part of a wholly loving and Fatherly 
design. 

A. C. B. 

Magdai^ene Coi,i,ege, Cambridge, 
July 14, 1907. 



INTRODUCTION 

I HAD intended to allow the records that follow 
— the records of a pilgrimage sorely beset and 
hampered by sorrow and distress — to speak for 
themselves. Let me only say that one who 
makes public a record so intimate and outspoken 
incurs, as a rule, a certain responsibility. He has 
to consider in the first place, or at least he cannot 
help instinctively considering, what the wishes of 
the writer would have been on the subject. I do 
not mean that one who has to decide such a point 
is bound to be entirely guided by that. He must 
w^eigh the possible value of the record to other 
spirits against what he thinks that the writer 
himself would have personally desired. A far 
more important consideration is what living 
people who play a part in such records feel about 
their publication. But I cannot help thinking 
that our whole standard in such matters is a very 
false and conventional one. Supposing, for in- 
stance, that a very sacred and intimate record. 



viii Introduction 

say, two hundred years old, were to be found 
among some family papers, it is inconceivable 
that any one would object to its publication on 
the ground that the writer of it, or the people 
mentioned in it, would not have wished it to see 
the light. We show how weak our faith really 
is in the continuance of personal identity after 
death, by allowing the lapse of time to affect 
the question at all ; we should consider it a 
horrible profanation to exhume and exhibit the 
body of a man who had been buried a few years 
ago, while we approve of the action of archaeolo- 
gists who explore Egyptian sepulchres, we sub- 
scribe to their operations, and should consider a 
man a mere sentimentalist who suggested that 
the mummies exhibited in museums ought to be 
sent back for interment in their original tombs. 
We think vaguely that a man who died a few 
years ago would in some way be outraged if his 
body were to be publicly displayed, while we do 
not for an instant regard the possible feelings of 
delicate and highly-born Egyptian ladies, on 
whose seemly sepulture such anxious and tender 
care was expended so many centuries ago. 

But in this case there is no such responsibility. 
None of the persons concerned have any objection 



Introduction ix 

to the publication of these records, and as for the 
writer himself he was entirely free from any 
desire for a fastidious seclusion. His life was a 
secluded one enough, and he felt strongly that a 
man has a right to his own personal privacy. 
But his own words sufficiently prove, if proof 
were needed, that he felt that to deny the right 
of others to participate in thoughts and experi- 
ences, which might uplift or help a mourner or a 
sufferer, was a selfish form of individualism with 
which he had no sympathy whatever. He felt, 
and I have heard him say, that one has no right 
to withhold from others any reflections which can 
console and sustain, and he held it to be the 
supreme duty of a man to ease, if he could, the 
burden of another. He knew that there is no 
sympathy in the world so effective as the sharing 
of similar experiences, as the power of assuring a 
sufferer that another has indeed trodden the same 
dark path and emerged into the light of Heaven. 
I will even venture to say that he deliberately 
intended that his record should be so used, for 
purposes of alleviation and consolation, and the 
bequest that he made of his papers to myself, 
entrusting them to m}^ absolute discretion, makes 
it clear to me that I have divined his wishes in 



X Introduction 

the matter. I think, indeed, that his only doubt 
was a natural diffidence as to whether the record 
had sufficient importance to justify its publica- 
tion. In any case, my own duty in the matter is 
to me absolutely clear. 

But I think that it will be as well for me to 
sketch a brief outline of my friend's life and 
character. I would have preferred to have done 
this, if it had been possible, by allowing him to 
speak for himself. But the earlier Diaries which 
exist are nothing but the briefest chronicle of 
events. He put his earlier confessions into his 
books, but he was in many ways more interesting 
than his books, and so I will try and draw a 
portrait of him as he appeared to one of his 
earliest friends. I knew him first as an under- 
graduate, and our friendship was unbroken after 
that. The Diary, written as it is under the 
shadow of a series of calamities, gives an im- 
pression of almost wilful sadness which is far 
from the truth. The requisite contrast can only 
be attained by representing him as he appeared 
to those who knew him. 

He was the son of a moderately wealthy 
country solicitor, and was brought up on normal 
lines. His mother died while he was a boy. 



Introduction xi 

He had one brother, younger than himself, and 
a sister who was younger still. He went to a 
leading public school, where he was in no way 
distinguished either in work or athletics. I 
gathered, v/hen I first knew him, that he had 
been regarded as a clever, quiet, good-natured, 
simple-minded boy, with a considerable charm 
of manner, but decidedly retiring. He was not 
expected to distinguish himself in any way, and 
he did not seem to have anj^ particular ambitions. 
I went up to Cambridge at the same time as he, 
and we formed a very close friendship. We had 
kindred tastes, and we did not concern ourselves 
very much with the social life of the place. We 
read, walked, talked, played games, idled, and 
amused ourselves together. I was more attached 
to him, I think, than he was to me ; indeed, I do 
not think that he cared at that time to form 
particularly close ties. He was frank, engaging, 
humorous, and observant ; but I do not think 
that he depended very much upon any one ; he 
rather tended to live an interior life of his own, of 
poetical and fanciful reflection. I think he tended 
to be pensive rather than high-spirited — at least, 
I do not often remember any particular ebullition 
of youthful enthusiasm. He liked congenial 



xii Introduction 

company, but he was always ready to be alone. 
He very seldom went to the rooms of other men, 
except in response to definite invitations ; but he 
was always disposed to welcome any one who 
came spontaneously to see him. He was a really 
diffident and modest fellow, and I do not think it 
even entered into his head to imagine that he 
had any social gifts or personal charm. But I 
gradually came to perceive that his mind was of 
a very fine quality. He had a mature critical 
judgment, and, though I used to think that his 
tastes were somewhat austere, I now see that he 
had a very sure instinct for alighting upon what 
was best and finest in books and art alike. He used 
to write poetry in those days, but he was shy of 
confessing it, and very concious of the demerits 
of what he wrote. I have some of his youthful 
verses by me, and though they are very unequal 
and full of lapses, yet he often strikes a firm note 
and displays a subtle insight. I think that he 
was more ambitious than I perhaps knew, and 
had that vague belief in his own powers which is 
characteristic of able and unambitious men. His 
was certainly, on the whole, a cold nature in 
those days. He could take up a friendship where 
he laid it down, by virtue of an easy frankness 



Introduction xiii 

and a sympathy that was intellectual rather than 
emotional. But the suspension of intercourse 
with a friend never troubled him. 

I became aware, in the course of a walking tour 
that I took with him in those days, that he had a 
deep perception of the beauties of nature ; it was 
not a vague accessibility to picturesque impres- 
sions, but a critical discernment of quality. He 
always said that he cared more for little vignettes, 
which he could grasp entire, than for wide and 
majestic prospects ; and this was true of his 
whole mind. 

I suppose that I tended to idealise him ; but he 
certainl}^ seems to me, in retrospect, to have then 
been invested with a singular charm. He was 
pure-minded and fastidious to a fault. He had 
considerable personal beauty, rather perhaps of 
expression than of feature. He was one of those 
people with a natural grace of movement, gesture, 
and speech. He was wholly unembarrassed in 
manner, but he talked little in a mixed compan3^ 
No one had fewer enemies or fewer intimate 
friends. The delightful years soon came to an 
end, and one of the few times I ever saw him 
exhibit strong emotion was on the evening before 
he left Cambridge, when he altogether broke 



xiv Introduction 

down. I remember his quoting a verse from 
Omar Khayyam : — 

** Yet ah ! that spring should vanish with the rose, 
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close," 

and breaking off in the middle with sudden tears. 
It was necessary for me to adopt a profession, 
and I remember envying him greatly when he 
told me that his father, who, I gathered, rather 
idolised him, was quite content that he should 
choose for himself at his leisure. He went abroad 
for a time ; and I met him next in lyondon, where 
he was proposing to read for the bar ; but I dis- 
covered that he had really found his mitier. He 
had written a novel, which he showed me, and 
though it was in some ways an immature per- 
formance, it had, I felt, high and unmistakable 
literary qualities. It was published soon after- 
wards and met with some success. He thereupon 
devoted himself to writing, and I was astonished 
at his industry and eagerness. He had for the 
first time found a congenial occupation. He 
lived mostly at home in those days, but he was 
often in I^ondon, where he went a good deal into 
society. I do not know very much about him at 
this time, but I gather that he achieved some- 
thing of a social reputation. He was never a 



Introduction xv 

voluble talker ; I do not suppose he ever set tlie 
table in a roar, but he had a quiet, humorous, 
and sympathetic manner. His physical health 
was then, as always, perfect. He was never tired 
or peevish ; he was frank, kindly, and companion- 
able ; he talked little about himself, and had a 
genuine interest in the study of personality, so 
that people were apt to feel at their best in his 
society. Meanwhile his books came out one after 
another — not great books exactly, but full of 
humour and perception, each an advance on the 
last. By the age of thirty he was accepted as one 
of the most promising novelists of the day. 

Then he did what I never expected he would 
do ; he fell wildly and enthusiastically in love 
with the only daughter of a Gloucestershire 
clergyman, a man of good family and position. 
She was the only child ; her mother had died 
some years before, and her father died shortly 
after the marriage. She was a beautiful, vigorous 
girl, extraordinarily ingenuous, simple-minded, 
and candid. She was not clever in the common 
acceptance of the term, and was not the sort of 
person by whom I should have imagined that my 
friend would have been attracted. They settled 
in a pleasant house, which they built in Surrey, 



xvi Introduction 

on the outskirts of a village. Three children 
were born to them — a boy and a girl, and another 
boy, who survived his birth only a few hours. 
From this time he almost entirely deserted 
Ivondon, and became, I thought, almost strangely 
content with a quiet domestic life. I was often 
with them in those early days, and I do not think 
I ever saw a happier circle. It was a large and 
comfortable house, very pleasantly furnished, with 
a big garden. His father died in the early years 
of the marriage, and left him a good income ; 
with the proceeds of his books he was a compar- 
atively wealthy man. His wife was one of those 
people who have a serene and unaffected interest 
in human beings. She was a religious woman, 
but her relations with others were rather based 
on the purest kindliness and sympathy. She 
knew every one in the place, and, having no 
touch of shyness, she went in and out among 
their poorer neighbours, the trusted friend and 
providence of numerous families ; but she had 
not in the least what is called a parochial mind. 
She had no touch of the bustling and efficient 
Lady Bountiful. The simple people she visited 
were her friends and neighbours, not her patients 
and dependents. She was simply an overflowing 



Introduction xvii 

fountain of goodness, and it was as natural to her 
to hurry to a scene of sorrow and suffering as it is 
for most people to desire to stay away. My friend 
himself had not the same taste ; it was always 
rather an effort to him to accommodate himself 
to people in a different way of life ; but it ought 
to be said that he was universally liked and re- 
spected for his quiet courtesy and simplicity, and 
fully as much for his own sake as for that of his 
wife. This fact could hardly be inferred from 
his Diary, and indeed he was wholly unconscious 
of it himself, because he never realised his natural 
charm, and indeed was unduly afraid of boring 
people by his presence. 

He was not exactly a hard worker, but he was 
singularly regular ; indeed, though he sometimes 
took a brief holiday after writing a book, he seldom 
missed a day without writing some few pages. 
One of the reasons why they paid so few visits 
was that he tended, as he told me, to feel so much 
bored away from his work. It was at once his 
occupation and his recreation. He was not one 
of those who write fiercely and feverishly, and 
then fall into exhaustion ; he wrote cheerfully 
and temperately, and never appeared to feel the 
strain. They lived quietly, but a good many 



xviii Introduction 

friends came and went. He much preferred to 
have a single guest, or a husband and wife, at a 
time, and pursued his work quietly all through. 
He used to see that one had all one could need, 
and then withdrew after tea-time, not reappear- 
ing until dinner. His wife, it was evident, was 
devoted to him with an almost passionate adora- 
tion. The reason why life went so easily there 
was that she studied unobtrusively his smallest 
desires and preferences ; and thus there was 
never any sense of special contrivance or con- 
sideration for his wishes ; the day was arranged 
exactly as he liked, without his ever having to 
insist upon details. He probably did not realise 
this, for though he liked settled ways, he was 
sensitively averse to feeling that his own con- 
venience was in any way superseding or over- 
riding the convenience of others. It used to be a 
great delight and refreshment to stay there. He 
was fond of rambling about the country, and was 
an enchanting companion in a tete-ci-tHe. In the 
evening he used to expand very much into a 
genial humour which was very attractive ; he 
had, too, the art of making swift and subtle tran- 
sitions into an emotional mood ; and here his 
poetical gift of seeing unexpected analogies and 



Introduction xix 

delicate characteristics gave his talk a fragrant 
charm which I have seldom heard equalled. 

It was indeed a picture of wonderful prosperity, 
happiness, and delight. The children were en- 
gaging, clever, and devotedly affectionate, and 
indeed the atmosphere of mutual affection seemed 
to float over the circle like a fresh and scented 
summer air. One used to feel, as one drove 
away, that though one's visit had been a pleas- 
ure, there would be none of the flatness which 
sometimes follows the departure of a guest, but 
that one was leaving them to a home life that 
was better than sociability, a life that was both 
sacred and beautiful, full to the brim of affection, 
yet without any softness or sentimentality. 

Then came m}^ friend's great success. He had 
written less since his marriage, and his books, I 
thought, were beginning to flag a little. There 
was a want of freshness about them ; he tended 
to use the same characters and similar situations ; 
both thought and phraseology became somewhat 
mannerised. I put this down myself to the belief 
that life was beginning to be more interesting to 
him than art. But there suddenly appeared the 
book which made him famous, a book both 
masterly and delicate, full of subtle analysis and 



XX Introduction 

perception, and with that indescribable sense of 
actuality which is the best test of art. The style 
at the same time seemed to have run clear ; he 
had gained a perfect command of his instrument, 
and I had about this book, what I had never had 
about any other book of his, the sense that he 
was producing exactly the effects he meant to 
produce. The extraordinary merit of the book 
was instantly recognised by all, I think, but the 
author. He went abroad for a time after the 
book was published, and eventually returned ; 
it was at that point of his life that the Diary 
began. 

I went to see him not long after, and it became 
rapidly clear to me that something had happened 
to him. Instead of being radiant with success, 
eager and contented, I found him depressed, anx- 
ious, haggard. He told me that he felt unstrung 
and exhausted, and that his power of writing had 
deserted him. But I must bear testimony at the 
same time to the fact which does not emerge in 
the Diary, namely, the extraordinary gallantry 
and patience of his conduct and demeanour. He 
struggled visibly and pathetically, from hour to 
hour, against his depression. He never com- 
plained ; he never showed, at least in my pres- 



Introduction xxi 

ence, the smallest touch of irritability. Indeed 
to myself, who had known him as the most 
equable and good-humoured of men, he seemed 
to support the trial with a courage little short of 
heroism. The trial was a sore one, because it de- 
prived him both of motive and occupation. But 
he made the best of it ; he read, he took long 
walks, and he threw himself with great eagerness 
into the education of his children— a task for 
which he was peculiarly qualified. Then a series 
of calamities fell upon him : he lost his boy, a 
child of wonderful ability and sweetness ; he lost 
his fortune, or the greater part of it. The latter 
calamity he bore with perfect imperturbabihty — 
they let their house and moved into Gloucester- 
shire. Here a certain measure of happiness 
seemed to return to him. He made a new friend, 
as the Diary relates, in the person of the Squire of 
the village, a man who, though an invalid, had a 
strong and almost mystical hold upon life. Here 
he began to interest himself in the people of the 
place, and tried all sorts of educational and social 
experiments. But his wife fell ill, and died very 
suddenly ; and, not long after, his daughter died 
too. He was for a time almost wholly broken 
down. I went abroad with him at his request 



xxii Introduction 

for a few weeks, but I was myself obliged to re- 
turn to England to my professional duties. I can 
only say that I did not expect ever to see him 
again. He was like a man, the spring of whose 
life was broken ; but at the same time he bore 
himself with a patience and a gentleness that 
fairly astonished me. We were together day by 
day and hour by hour. He made no complaint, 
and he used to force himself, with what sad effort 
was only too plain, to converse on all sorts of 
topics. Some time after he drifted back to Eng- 
land ; but at first he appeared to be in a very 
listless and dejected state. Then there came, 
almost suddenly, it seemed to me, a change. He 
had made the sacrifice ; he had accepted the situa- 
tion. There came to him a serenity which was 
only like his old serenity from the fact that it 
seemed entirely unaffected ; but it was based, I 
felt, on a very different view of life. He was now 
content to wait and to believe. It was at this 
time that the Squire died ; and not long after- 
wards, the Squire's niece, a woman of great 
strength and simplicity of character, married a 
clergyman, to whom she had been long attached, 
both being middle-aged people ; and the living 
soon afterwards falling vacant, her husband ac- 



Introduction xxiil 

cepted it, and the newly-married pair moved into 
the Rectory ; while my friend, who had been 
named as the Squire's ultimate heir, a life-interest 
in the property being secured to the niece, went 
into the Hall. Shortly afterwards he adopted a 
nephew — his sister's son — who, with the consent 
of all concerned, w^as brought up as the heir to 
the estate, and is its present proprietor. 

My fidend lived some fifteen years after that, a 
quiet, active, and obviously contented life. I was 
a frequent guest at the Hall, and I am sure that I 
never saw a more attached circle. My friend led 
an active life. He became a magistrate, and he 
did a good deal of county business ; but his main 
interest was in the place, where he was the trusted 
friend and counsellor of every household in the 
parish. He took a great deal of active exercise 
in the open air ; he read much. He taught his 
nephew whom he did not send to school. He 
regained, in fuller measure than ever, his old de- 
lightful charm of conversation, and his humour, 
which had always been predominant in him, took 
on a deeper and richer tinge ; but whereas in old 
days he had been brilliant and epigrammatic, he 
was now rather poetical and suggestive ; and 
whereas he had formerly been reticent about his 



xxiv Introduction 

emotions and his religion he now acquired what 
is to my mind the profoundest conversational 
charm — the power of making swift and natural 
transitions into matters of what, for want of a 
better word, I will call spiritual experience. I 
remember his once saying to me that he had 
learnt, from his intercourse with his village neigh- 
bours, that the one thing in the world in which 
every one was interested was religion; "even 
more," he added, with a smile, "than in the one 
subject in which Sir Robert Walpole said that 
every one could join." 

I do not suppose that his religion was of a 
particularly orthodox kind ; he was impatient 
of dogmatic definition and of ecclesiastical ten- 
dencies ; but he cared with all his heart for the 
vital principles of religion, the love of God and 
the love of one's neighbour. 

He lived to see his adopted son grow up to 
maturity ; and I do not think I ever saw anything 
so beautiful as the confidence and affection that 
existed between them ; and then he died one 
day, as he had often told me he desired to die. 
He had been ailing for a week, and on rising 
from his chair in the morning he was seized by 
a sudden faintness and died within half-an-hour. 



Introduction xxv 

hardly knowing, I imagine, that he was in any 
danger. 

It fell to me to deal with his papers. There 
was a certain amount of scattered writing, but no 
completed work ; it all dated from before the pub- 
lication of his great book. It was determined 
that this Diary should eventually see the light, 
and circumstances into which I need not now 
enter have rendered its appearance advisable at 
the present date. 

The interest of the document is its candour and 
outspokenness. If the tone of the record, until 
near the end, is one of unrelieved sadness, it must 
be borne in mind that all the time he bore himself 
in the presence of others with a singular courage 
and simplicity. He said to me once, in an hour 
of dark despair, that he had drunk the dregs of 
self-abasement. That he believed that he had 
no sense of morality, no loyal affection, no love 
of virtue, no patience or courage. That his only 
motives had been timidity, personal ambition, 
love of respectabilit}^ love of ease. He added 
that this had been slowly revealed to him, and 
that the only way out was a way that he had not 
as yet strength to tread ; the way of utter sub- 
mission, absolute confidence, entire resignation. 



xxvi Introduction 

He said that there was one comfort, wh^'ch 
was, that he knew the worst about himself that 
it was possible to know. I told him that his 
view of his character was unjust and exag- 
gerated, but he only shook his head with a 
smile that went to my heart. It was on that 
day, I think, that he touched the lowest depth of 
all ; and after that he found the way out, along 
the path that he had indicated. 

This is no place for eulogy and panegyric. My 
task has been just to trace the portrait of my 
friend as he appeared to others ; his own words 
shall reveal the inner spirit. The beauty of the 
life to me was that he attained, unconsciously 
and gradually, to the very virtues which he most 
desired and in which he felt himself to be most 
deficient. He had to bear a series of devastating 
calamities. He had loved the warmth and near- 
ness of his home circle more deeply than most 
men, and the whole of it was swept away ; he 
had depended for stimulus and occupation alike 
upon his artistic work, and the power was taken 
from him at the moment of his highest achieve- 
ment. His loss of fortune is not to be reckoned 
among his calamities, because it was no calamity 
to him. He ended by finding a richer treasure 



Introduction xxvii 

than any that he had set out to obtain ; and I 
remember that he said to me once, not long be- 
fore his end, that whatever others might feel 
about, their own lives, he could not for a moment 
doubt that his own had been an education of a 
deliberate and loving kind, and that the day 
when he realised that, when he saw that there 
was not a single incident in his life that had not 
a deep and an intentional value for him, was one 
of the happiest days of his whole existence. I do 
not know that he expected anything or speculated 
on what might await him hereafter ; he put his 
future, just as he put his past and his present, 
in the hands of God, to whom he committed 
himself "as unto a faithful Creator." 



THE ALTAR FIRE 



The Altar Fire 

September^, 1888. 

WK came back yesterday, after a very pro- 
sperous time at Zermatt ; we have been 
there two entire months. Yes, it was certainly 
prosperous ! We had delicious weather, and I 
have vSeen a number of pleasant people. I have 
done a great deal of walking, I have read a lot of 
novels and old poetry, I have sate about a good 
deal in the open air; but I do not really like 
Switzerland; there are of course a multitude of 
noble wide-hung views, but there are few vign- 
ettes, little on which the mind and heart dwell 
with an intimate and familiar satisfaction. Those 
airy pinnacles of toppling rocks, those sheets of 
slanted snow, those ice-bound crags — there is a 
sense of fear and mystery about them ! One does 
not know what is going on there, what they are 
waiting for; they have no human meaning. 
They do not seem to have any relation to 



2 The Altar Fire 

humanity at all. Sunday after Sunday one used 
to have sermons in that hot, trim little wooden 
church — some from quite famous preachers — 
about the need of rest, the advantage of letting 
the mind and eye dwell in awe upon the wonder- 
ful works of God. Of course the mountains are 
wonderful enough; but they make me feel that 
humanity plays a very trifling part in the mind 
and purpose of God. I do not^think that if I 
were a preacher of the Gospel, and had a specu- 
lative turn, I should care to take a holiday among 
the mountains. I should be beset by a dreary 
wonder whether the welfare of humanity was a 
thing very dear to God at all. I should feel very 
strongly what the Psalmist said, "What is man 
that Thou art mindful of him ? " It would take 
the wind out of my sails, when I came to preach 
about Redemption, because I should be tempted 
to believe that, after all, human beings were only 
in the world on sufferance, and that the aching, 
frozen, barren earth, so inimical to life, was in 
even more urgent need of redemption. Day by 
day, among the heights, I grew to feel that I 
wanted some explanation of why the strange 
panorama of splintered crag and hanging ice-fall 
was there at all. It certainly is not there with 



Switzerland 3 

any reference to man — at least it is hard to be- 
lieve that it is all there that human beings may- 
take a refreshing holida}^ in the midst of it. 
When one penetrates Switzerland by the green 
pine-clad valleys, passing through and beneath 
those delicious upland villages, each clustering 
round a church with a glittering cupola, the 
wooden houses with their brown fronts, their 
big eaves, perched up aloft at such pleasant 
angles, one thinks of Switzerland as an inhabited 
land of valleys, with screens and backgrounds of 
peaks and snowfields; but when one goes up 
higher still, and gets up to the top of one of the 
peaks, one sees that Switzerland is really a region 
of barren ridges, millions of acres of cold stones 
and ice, with a few little green cracks among the 
mountain bases, where men have crept to live; 
and that man is only tolerated there. 

One day I was out with a guide on a peak at 
sunrise. Behind the bleak and shadowy ridges 
there stole a flush of awakening dawn ; then came 
a line of the purest yellow light, touching the 
crags and snowfields with sharp blue shadows ; 
the lemon- coloured radiance passed into fiery 
gold, the gold flushed to crimson, and then the 
sun leapt into sight, and shed the light of day 



4 The Altar Fire 

upon the troubled sea of mountains. It was more 
than that — the hills made, as it were, the rim of 
a great cold shadowy goblet ; and the light was 
poured into it from the uprushing sun, as bubbling 
and sparkling wine is poured into a beaker. I 
found m3^self thrilled from head to foot with an 
intense and mysterious rapture. What did it all 
mean, this awful and resplendent solemnity, full 
to the brim of a solitary and unapproachable holi- 
ness ? What was the secret of the thing ? Per- 
haps every one of those stars that we had seen 
fade out of the night was ringed round by planets 
such as ours, peopled by forms undreamed of ; 
doubtless on millions of globes, the daylight of 
some central sun was coming in glory over the 
cold ridges, and waking into life sentient beings, 
in lands outside our ken, each with civilisations 
and histories and hopes and fears of its own. 
A stupendous, an overwhelming thought ! And 
yet, in the midst of it, here was I myself, a little 
consciousness sharply divided from it all, permit- 
ted to be a spectator, a partaker of the intolerable 
and gigantic m3^stery, and yet so strangely made 
that the whole of that vast and prodigious com- 
plexity of life and law counted for less to me than 
the touch of weariness that hung, after my long 



Strange Moods 5 

vigil, over limbs and brain. The faculty', the 
godlike power of knowing and imagining, all 
actually less to me than my own tiny and fragile 
sensations. Such moods as these are strange 
things, because they bring with them so intense 
a desire to know, to perceive, and yet paralyse 
one with the horror of the darkness in which one 
moves. One cannot conceive why it is that one 
is given the power of realising the multiplicity of 
creation, and yet at the same time left so wholly 
ignorant of its significance. One longs to leap 
into the arms of God, to catch some w^hisper of 
His voice ; and at the same time there falls the 
shadow of the prison-house ; one is driven relent- 
lessly back upon the old limited life, the duties, 
the labours, the round of meals and sleep, the 
tiny relations with others as ignorant as ourselves, 
and, still worse, with the petty spirits who have 
a complacent explanation of it all. Even over 
love itself the shadow falls. I am as near to my 
own dear and true Maud as it is possible to be ; 
but I can tell her nothing of the mystery, and 
she can tell me nothing. We are allowed for a 
time to draw close to each other, to whisper to 
each other our hopes and fears ; but at any 
moment we can be separated. The children. 



6 The Altar Fire 

Alec and Maggie, dearer to me — I can say it hon- 
estly — than life itself, to whom we have given be- 
ing, whose voices I hear as I write, what of 
them ? They are each of them alone, though 
they hardly know it yet. The little unnamed 
son, who opened his eyes upon the world six 
years ago, to close them in a few hours, where 
and what is he now ? Is he somewhere, any- 
where ? Does he know of the joy and sorrow he 
has brought into our lives ? I would fain believe 
it . . . these are profitless thoughts, of one 
staring into the abyss. Somehow these bright 
weeks have been to me a dreary time. I am well 
in health ; nothing ails me. It is six months 
since my last book was published, and I have 
taken a deliberate holiday ; but always before, 
my mind, the strain of a book once taken off it, 
has begun to sprout and burgeon with new ideas 
and schemes : but now, for the first time in my 
life, my mind and heart remain bare and arid. I 
seem to have drifted into a dreary silence. It is 
not that things have been less beautiful, but 
beauty seems to have had no message, no signifi- 
cance for me. The people that I have seen have 
come and gone like ghosts and puppets. I have 
had no curiosity about them, their occupations 



The Empty Soul 7 

and thoughts, their hopes and loves ; it has not 
seemed worth while to be interested, in a Hfe 
which appears so short, and which leads nowhere. 
It seems morbid to write thus, but I have not 
been either morbid or depressed. It has been an 
easy life, the life of the last few months, without 
effort or dissatisfaction, but without zest. It is a 
mental tiredness, I suppose. I have written m}^- 
selfout, and the cistern must fill again. Yet I 
have had no feeling of fatigue. It would have 
been almost better to have had something to 
bear; but I am richer than I need be, Maud and 
the children have been in perfect health and hap- 
piness, I have been well and strong. I shall hope 
that the familiar scene, the pleasant activities of 
home-life will bring the desire back. I realise 
how much the fabric of my life is built upon my 
writing, and write I must. Well, I have said 
enough ; the pleasure of these entries is that one 
can look back to them, and see the movement of 
the current of life in a bygone day. I have an 
immense mass of arrears to make up, in the form 
of letters and business, but I want to survey the 
ground ; and the survey is not a very happy one 
this morning ; though if I made a list of my 
benefits and the reverse, like Robinson Crusoe, 



8 The Altar Fire 

the credit side would be full of good things, and 
the debit side nearly empty. 

September 15, 1888. 
It is certainly very sweet to be at home again ; 
to find oneself in familiar scenes, with all the 
pretty homely comfortable things waiting patient- 
ly for us to return — pictures, books, rooms, trees, 
kindly people. Wright, my excellent gardener, 
with whom I spent an hour strolling round the 
garden to-day, touched me by saying that he was 
glad to see me back, and that it had seemed dull 
without me ; he had done fifty little simple things 
in our absence, in his tranquil and faithful way, 
and is pleased to have them noticed. Alec, who 
was with me to-day, delighted me by finding his 
stolid wooden horse in the summer-house, rather 
damp and dishevelled, and almost bursting into 
tears at the pathos of the neglect. "Did you 
think we had forgotten you ? " he said as he 
hugged it. I suggested that he should have a 
good meal. " I don't think he would care about 
grass,-' said Alec thoughtfully, "he should have 
some leaves and berries for a treat." And this 
was tenderly executed. Maud went off to see 
some of her old pensioners, and came back glow- 
ing with pleasure, with twenty pleasant stories of 



Home 9 

welcome. Two or three people came in to see me 
on business, and I was glad to feel I was of use. 
In the afternoon we all went oflf on a long ramble 
together, and we were quite surprised to see that 
everything seemed to be in its place as usual. 
Summer is over, the fields have been reaped ; 
there is a comfortable row of stacks in the rick- 
yard ; the pleasant humming of an engine came 
up the valley, as it sang its homely monotone, 
now low, now loud. After tea — the evenings 
have begun to close in — I went oflf to my study, 
took out my notebook and looked over my sub- 
jects, but I could make nothing of any of them. 
I could see that there were some good ideas among 
them ; but none of them took shape. Often I 
have found that to glance over my subjects thus, 
after a holiday, is like blowing soap-bubbles. 
The idea comes out swelling and eddying from 
the bowl ; a globe swimming with lucent hues, 
reflecting dim moving shapes of rooms and fig- 
ures. Not so to-day. M}^ mind winked and 
flapped and rustled like a burnt-out fire ; not in a 
depressed or melancholy way, but phlegmatically 
and dully. Well, the spirit bloweth as it listeth; 
but it is strange to find my mind so unresponsive, 
with none of that pleasant stir, that excitement 



lo The Altar Fire 

that has a sort of fantastic terror about it, such as 
happens when a book stretches itself dimly and 
mysteriously before the mind — when one has a 
glimpse of a quiet room with people talking, a 
man riding fiercely on lonely roads, two strolling 
together in a moonlit garden, with the shadows 
of the cypresses on the turf, and the fragrance of 
the sleeping flowers blown abroad. They stop to 
listen to the nightingale in the bush — they turn 
to each other — the currents of life are inter- 
mingled at the meeting of the lips, the warm 
shudder at the touch of the floating tress of fra- 
grant hair. To-day nothing comes to me ; I throw 
it all aside and go to see the children, am greeted 
delightfully, and join in some pretty and absurd 
game. Then dinner comes ; and I sit afterwards 
reading, dropping the book to talk, Maud work- 
ing in her corner by the fire — all things moving so 
tranquilly and easily in this pleasantly ordered 
home-like house of ours. It is good to be at 
home ; and how pitiful to be hankering thus for 
something else to fill the mind, which should 
obliterate all the beloved things so tenderly pro- 
vided. Maud asks about the reception of the 
latest book, and sparkles with pride at some of 
the things I tell her. She sees somehow — how do 



Success 1 1 

women divine these things ? — that there is a Httle 
shadow of unrest over me, and she tells me all the 
comforting things that I dare not say to myself — 
that it is only that the book took more out of me 
than I knew, and that the resting-time is not over 
yet ; but that I shall soon settle down again. 
Then I go off to smoke awhile ; and then the 
haunting shadow comes back for a little ; till at 
last I go softly through the sleeping house ; and 
presently lie listening to the quiet breathing of 
my wife beside me, glad to be at home again, 
until the thoughts grow blurred, take grotesque 
shapes, sinking softly into repose. 

September i8, 1888. 
I have spent most of the morning in clearing 
up business, and dealing with papers and letters. 
Among the accumulations was a big bundle of 
press-cuttings, all dealing with my last book. It 
comes home to me that the book has been a suc- 
cess ; it began by slaying its thousands, like 
Saul, and now it has slain its tens of thousands. 
It has brought me hosts of letters, from all sorts 
of people, some of them very delightful and en- 
couraging, many very pleasant — ^just grateful and 
simple letters of thanks — some vulgar and im- 
pertinent, some strangely intimate. What is it, 



12 The Altar Fire 

I wonder, that makes some people want to tell a 
writer whom they have never seen all about them- 
selves, their thoughts and histories ? In some 
cases it is an unaffected desire for sympathy from 
a person whom they think perceptive and sympa- 
thetic ; in some cases it proceeds, I think, from a 
hysterical desire to be thought interesting, with 
a faint hope, I fear, of being possibly put into a 
book. Some of the letters have been simply un- 
intelligible and inconceivable on any hypothesis, 
except for the human instinct to confess, to bare 
the heart, to display the secret sorrow. Many 
of these letters are intensely pathetic, affecting, 
heart-rending ; an invalid lady writes to say that 
she would like to know me, and will I come to the 
North of England to see her ? A man writes a 
pretentious letter, to ask me to go and stay with 
him for a week. He has nothing to offer, he says, 
but plain fare and rather cramped quarters ; but 
he has thought deeply, he adds, on many of the 
problems on which I touch, and thinks that he 
could throw light upon some of them. Imagine 
w^hat reserves of interest and wisdom he must 
consider that he possesses ! Then there are 
patronising letters from people who say that I 
have put into words thoughts which they have 



A Painful Letter 13 

always had, and which they never took the 
trouble to write down ; then there are requests 
for autographs, and "sentiments," and sugges- 
tions for new books. A man writes to say that 
I could do untold good if I would write a book 
with a purpose, and ventures to propose that I 
should take up anti-vivisection. There are a few 
letters worth their weight in gold, from good men 
and true, writers and critics, who thank me for 
a book which fulfils its aim and artistic purpose, 
while on the other hand there are some from 
people who find fault with my book for not doing 
what I never even attempted to do. Here is one 
that has given me deep and unmitigated pain ; it 
is from an old friend, who, I am told, is aggrieved 
because he thinks that I have put him into my 
book, in the form of an unpleasant character. 
The worst of it is that there is enough truth in 
it to make it difficult for me to deny it. My 
character is, in some superficial ways, habits, and 
tricks of speech, like Reginald. Well, on hearing 
what he felt, I wrote him a letter of apology for 
my carelessness and thoughtlessness, saying as 
frankly as I could that the character was not in 
any way drawn from him, but that I undoubtedly 
had, almost unconsciously, taken an external trait 



14 The Altar Fire 

or two from him ; adding that I was truly and 
heartily sorry, and hoped that there would be no 
ill-feeling ; and that I valued his friendship even 
more than he probably imagined. Here is his 
reply : 

My DEAR F . If you spit on the head of a 

maji passing in the sty^eet and then ivrite to hint 
a feia days after to say that ail is forgiven, and 
that you are sorry your aim 7vas so aeeurate, yati 
don't mend matters. 

You express a hope that after what has oecurred 
there 7nay be no ill-feeli^ig between us. Well, yo7i 
have done me ivhat I consider an injury. I have no 
desire to repay it ; if I had a chance of doing you a 
good turn, I should do it ; if I heard you abused^ I 
should stick up for y 021. I have no inte^ition of 
makhig a grievance out of it. But if you ask me 
to say that I do not feel a sense of wrong, or to ex- 
press a wish to meet you, or to trust you any lo7iger 
as I have hitherto trusted you, I must decline say- 
ing anything of the ki?id, because it would not be 
true. 

Of course I know that there caimot be omelettes 
without breakijig eggs ; and I suppose that there 
cannot be what are called psychological 7iovels^ with- 
out violating confidences. But you can7iot be sur- 



Reviews 15 

prised, when you encourage aji old friend to irust 
yon and confide in you, and then d7'aw an ugly 
caricature of him in a book, if he thinks the worse of 
you quence. I hear that the book is a great 

success ; you must be content with the fact that the 
yolks arc as golden as they are. Please do not write 
to vie again on the subject. I will try to forget it^ 
and if I succeed, I will let you hioiv. 

Yours 

That is the kind of letter that poisons life for 
awhile. While I am aware that I meant no 
treachery, I am none the less aware that I have 
contrived to be a traitor. Of conrse one vows one 
will never write another line ; bnt I do not sup- 
pose I shall keep the vow. I reply shortly, eat- 
ing all the dirt I can collect ; and I shall try to 
forget it too ; though it is a shabby end of an old 
friendship. 

Then I turn to the reviews. I find them grac- 
ious, respectful, laudatory. They are to be taken 
cunt grano, of course. When an enthusiastic re- 
viewer says that I have passed at one stride into 
the very first class of contemporary writers, I do 
not feel particularly elated, though I am undeni- 
ably pleased. I find my conception, my structure, 
my style, my descriptions, my character- drawing, 



i6 The Altar Fire 

liberally and generously praised. There is no 
doubt that the book has been really successful 
beyond my wildest hopes. If I were in any 
doubt, the crop of letters from editors and pub- 
lishers asking me for articles and books of every 
kind, and offering me incredible terms, would 
convince me. 

Now what do I honestly feel about all this ? I 
will try for my own benefit to say. Of course 
I am very much pleased, but the odd thing is 
that I am not more pleased. I can say quite un- 
affectedly that it does not turn my head in the 
least. I reflect that if this had happened when I 
began to write, I should have been beside myself 
with delight, full of self-confidence, blown out 
with wind, like the frog in the fable. Even now 
there is a deep satisfaction in having done what 
one has tried to do. But instead of raking in the 
credit, I am more inclined to be grateful for my 
good fortune. I feel as if I had found something 
valuable rather than made something beautiful ; 
as if I had stumbled on a nugget of gold or a 
pearl of price. I am very fatalistic about writing ; 
one is given a certain thing to say, and the power 
to say it ; it does not come by effort, but by a 
pleasant felicity. After all, I reflect, the book is 



My Book 17 

onh' a good story, well told. I do not feel like a 
benefactor of the human race, but at the best like 
a skilful minstrel, who has given some innocent 
pleasure. What, after all, does it amount to ? I 
have touched to life, perhaps, a few gracious, ten- 
der, romantic fancies — but, after all, the thoughts 
and emotions were there to start with, just as the 
harmonies which the musician awakes are all 
dormant in his throbbing strings. I have cre- 
ated nothing, only perceived and represented 
phenomena. I have gained no sensibility, no 
patience, no wisdom in the process. I know no 
more of the secret of life and love, than before I 
wrote my book. I am onl}' like a scientific in- 
vestigator w^ho has discovered certain delicate 
processes, subtle laws at work. They were there 
all the time ; the temptation of the investigator 
and of the writer alike, is to yield to the delusion 
that he has made them, b}^ discerning and naming 
them. As for the style, which is highly praised, 
it has not been made by effort. It is myself. I 
have never written for any other reason than 
because I liked writing. It has been a pleasure 
to overcome difficulties, to make my way round 
obstacles, to learn how to express the vague and 
intangible thins:. But I deserve no credit for 



1 8 The Altar Fire 

this ; I should deserve credit if I had made my- 
self a good writer out of a bad one ; but I could 
always write, and I am not a better writer, only 
a more practised one. There is no satisfaction 
there. 

And then, too, I find myself overshadowed by 
the thought that I do not want to do worse, to 
go downhill, to decline. I do not feel at all sure 
that I can write a better book, or so good a 'one 
indeed. I should dislike failing far more than I 
like having succeeded. To have reached a cer- 
tain standard makes it incumbent on one that 
one should not fall below that standard ; and no 
amount of taking pains will achieve that. It can 
only be done through a sort of radiant felicity 
of mood, which is really not in my power to 
count upon. I was happy, supremel}^ happy, 
when I was writing the book. I lighted upon a 
fine conception, and it was the purest joy to see 
the metal trickle firmly from the furnace into the 
mould. Can I make such a mould again ? Can 
I count upon the ingots piled in the fierce flame ? 
Can I reckon upon the same temperamental 
glow ? I do not know — I fear not. 

Here is the net result — that I have become a 
sort of personage in the world of letters Do I 



Fame 19 

desire it Yes, in a sense I do, but in a sense I 
do not. I do not want mone\', I do not wish 
for public appearances. I have no social ambi- 
tions. To be pointed out as the distinguished 
novelist is distinctl}^ inconvenient. People will 
demand a certain standard of talk, a certain 
brilliance, which I am not in the least capable of 
giving them. I want to sit at my ease at the 
banquet of life, not to be ushered to the highest 
rooms. I prefer interesting and pleasant people 
to important and majestic persons. Perhaps if 
I were more simple-minded, I vShould not care 
about the matter at all ; just be grateful for the 
increased warmth and amenity of life — but I am 
not simple-minded, I hate not fulfilling other 
people's expectations. I am not a prodigal, full- 
blooded, royal sort of person at all. I am not 
conscious of greatness, but far more of emptiness. 
I do not wish to seem pretentious. I have got 
this one faculty ; but it has outrun all the rest of 
me, and I am aware that it has drained the rest 
of my nature. The curious thing is that this sort 
of fame is the thing that as a young man I used 
to covet. I used to think it would be so sustain- 
ing and resplendent. Now that it has come to 
me, in far richer measure, I will not say than 



20 The Altar Fire 

I hoped, but at all events than I had expected, 
it does not seem to be a wholly desirable thing. 
Fame is onl}^ one of the sauces of life ; it is not 
the food or the spirit at all. The people that 
praise one are like the courtiers that bow in the 
anterooms of a king, between whom he passes to 
the lonely study where his life is lived. I am not 
feeling ungrateful or ungenerous ; but I would 
give all that I have gained for a new and inspiring 
friendship, or for the certainty that I should write 
another book with the same happiness as I wrote 
my last book. Perhaps I ought to feel the re- 
sponsibility more ! I do feel it in a sense, but 
I have never estimated the moral effectiveness of 
a writer of fiction very high ; one comforts rather 
than sustains ; one diverts rather than feeds. If 
I could hear of one self-sacrificing action, one 
generous deed, one tranquil surrender that had 
been the result of m.y book, I should be more 
pleased than I am with all the shower of compli- 
ments. Of course in a sense praise makes life 
more interesting ; but what I really desire to 
apprehend is the significance and meaning of life, 
that strange mixture of pain and pleasure, of 
commonplace events and raptures ; and my book 
brings me no nearer that. To feel God nearer 



Fame 21 

me, to feel, not by evidence but by instinct, that 
there is a Heart that cares for me, and moulded 
me from the clay for a purpose — why, I would 
give all that I have in the world for that ! 

Of course Maud will be pleased ; but that will 
be because she believes that I deserve everything 
and anything, and is only surprised that the world 
has not found out sooner what a marvellous 
person I am. God knows I do not undervalue her 
belief in me ; but it makes and keeps me humble 
to feel how far she is from the truth, how far 
from realising the pitiful weakness and emptiness 
of her lover and husband. 

Is this, I wonder, how all successful people 
feel about fame ? The greatest of all have often 
never enjoyed the least touch of it in their life- 
time ; and they are happier so. Some few rich 
and generous natures, like Scott and Browning, 
have neither craved for it nor valued it. Some of 
the greatest have desired it, slaved for it, clung 
to it. Yet when it comes, one realises how small 
a part of life and thought it fills — unless indeed 
it brings other desirable things with it ; and this 
is not the case with me, because I have all I 
want. Well, if I can but set to work at another 
book, all these idle thoughts will die away ; but 



2 2 The Altar Fire 

ni}^ mind rattles like a shrunken kernel. I must 
kneel down and pray, as Blake and his wife did, 
when the visions deserted them. 

September 25, 1888. 

Here is a social instance of what it means to 
become ' ' quite a little man, ' ' as Stevenson used 
to say. Some county people near here, good- 
natured, pushing persons, who have always been 
quite civil but nothing more, invited themselves 
to luncheon here a day or two ago, bringing with 
them a distinguished visitor. They throw in 
some nauseous compliments to my book, and say 
that Lord Wilburton wishes to make my ac- 
quaintance. I do not particularly want to 
make his, though he is a man of some note. 
But there was no pretext for declining. Such an 
incursion is a distinct bore ; it clouds the morn- 
ing — one cannot settle down with a tranquil 
mind to one's work ; it fills the afternoon. 
They came, and it proved not uninteresting. 
They are pleasant people enough, and Lord 
Wilburton is a man who has been everywhere and 
seen everybody. The fact that he wished to 
make my acquaintance shows, no doubt, that I 
have sailed into his ken, and that he wishes to 



Visitors 23 

add me to his collection. I felt myself singularly 
unrewarding. I am not a talker at the best of 
times, and to feel that I am expected to be witt}^ 
and suggestive is the last straw. Lord Wilbur- 
ton discoursed fluently and agreeably. Lady 
Harriet said that she envied me my powers of 
writing, and asked how I came to think of my 
last brilliant book, which she had so enjoyed. I 
did not know what to say and could not invent 
anything. They made a great deal of the child- 
ren. They walked round the garden. They 
praised everything ingeniously. They could not 
say the house was big, and so they called it 
convenient. They could not say that the garden 
was ample, but Lord Wilburton said that he had 
never seen so much ground go to the acre. That 
was neat enough. They made a great point of 
visiting my library, and carried away my auto- 
graph, written with the very same pen with 
which I wrote my great book. This they called 
a privilege. They made us promise to go over to 
the castle, which I have no great purpose of 
doing. We parted with mutual good will, and 
with that increase of geniality on my own part 
which comes on me at the end of a visit. Al- 
together I did not dislike it, though it did not 



24 The Altar Fire 

seem to me particularly worth while. To-day 
my wife tells me that they told the Fitzpatricks 
that it was a great pleasure seeing me, because 
I was so modest and unafifected. That is a court- 
eous way of concealing their disappointment 
that I was not more brilliant. But, good 
heavens, what did the}' expect? I suppose, 
indeed I have no doubt, that if I had talked 
mysteriously about my book, and had described 
the genesis of it, and my method of working, 
they would have preferred that. Just as in rem- 
iniscences of the Duke of Wellington, the people 
who saw him in later life seem to have been 
struck dumb by a sort of tearful admiration at 
the sight of the Duke condescending to eat his 
dinner, or to light a guest's bedroom candle- 
stick. Perhaps if I had been more simple-minded 
I should have talked frankly about myself. 
I don't know ; it seems to me all rather vulgar. 
But my visitors are kindly and courteous people, 
and felt, I am sure, that they were both receiving 
and conferring benefits. They will like to de- 
scribe me and my house, and they will feel that I 
am pleased at being received on equal terms into 
county society. I don't put this down at all 
cynically ; but they are not people with whom I 



Feudal Inheritances 25 

have anything in common. I am not of their 
monde at all. I belong to the middle class and 
they are of the upper class. I have a faint desire 
to indicate that I don't want to cross the border- 
line, and that what I desire is the society of 
interesting and congenial people, not the society 
of my social superiors. This is not unworldliness 
in the least, merely hedonism. Feudalism runs 
in the blood of these people, and they feel, not 
consciously but quite instinctively, that they 
confer a benefit by making my acquaintance. 
" Doubtless ye are the people," as Job said, but 
I do not want to rise in the social scale. It would 
be the earthen pot and the brazen pot at best. I 
am quite content with my own class, and life is 
not long enough to change it, and to learn the 
habits of another. I have no quarrel with the 
aristocracy, and do not in the least wish to level 
them to the ground. I am quite prepared to 
acknowledge them as the upper class. They are, 
as a rule, public-spirited, courteous barbarians, 
with a sense of honour and responsibility. But 
they take a great many things as matters of 
course which are to me simply alien. I no more 
wish to live with them than Wright, my self- 
respecting gardener, wishes to live with me — 



26 The Altar Fire 

though so deeply rooted are feudal ideas in the 
blood of the race, that Wright treats me with a 
shade of increased deference because I have been 
entertaining a party of lyords and Ladies ; and 
the Vicar's wife said to Maud that she heard we 
had been giving a very grand party, and would 
soon be quite county people. The poor woman 
will think >more of my books than she has ever 
thought before. I don't think this is snobbish, 
because it is so perfectly instinctive and natural. 

But what I wanted to say was that this is the 
kind of benefit which is conferred by success ; 
and for a quiet person, who likes familiar and 
tranquil ways, it is no benefit at all ; indeed, 
rather the reverse ; unless it is a benefit that the 
station-master touched his hat to me to-day, 
which he has never done before. It is a funny 
little world. Meanwhile I have no ideas, and 
my visitors to-day haven't given me any, though 
Lord Wilburton might be a useful figure in a 
book ; so perfectly appointed, so quiet, so defer- 
ential, so humorous, so deliciously insincere ! 

October 4, 1888. 

I have happened to read lately, in some 
magazines, certain illustrated interviews with 



Privacy 27 

prominent people, which have given me a deep 
sense of mental and moral nausea. I do not 
think I am afflicted with a strong sense of the 
sacredness of a man's home life — at least, if it is 
sacred at all, it seems to me to be just as much 
profaned by allowing visitors or strangers to see 
it and share it as it is by allowing it to be written 
about in a periodical. If it is sacred in a peculiar 
sense, then only ver}' intimate friends ought to 
be allowed to see it, and there should be a tacit 
sense that they ought not to tell any one outside 
what it is like ; but if I am invited to luncheon 
with a celebrated man whom I do not know, 
because I happen to be staying in the neighbour- 
hood, I do not think I violate his privacy by 
describing my experience to other people. If a 
man has a beautiful house, a happy interior, a 
gifted family circle, and if he is himself a re- 
markable man, it is a privilege to be admitted to 
it, it does one good to see it ; and it seems to me 
that the more people who realise the beauty 
and happiness of it the better. The question 
of numbers has nothing to do with it. Sup- 
pose, for instance, that I am invited to stay 
with a great man, and suppose that I have a 
talent for drawing ; I may sketch his house and 



28 The Altar Fire 

his rooms, himself and his family, if he does not 
object — and it seems to me that it would be 
churlish and affected of him to object — I may 
write descriptive letters from the place, giving an 
account of his domestic ways, his wife and family, 
his rooms, his books, his garden, his talk. I do 
not see that there is any reasonable objection to my 
showing those sketches to other people who are 
interested in the great man, or to the descriptive 
letters or diary that I write being shown or read 
to others who do not know him. Indeed I think 
it is a perfectly natural and wholesome desire to 
know something of the life and habits of great 
men ; I would go further, and say that it is an 
improving and inspiring sort of knowledge to be 
acquainted with the pleasant details of the well- 
ordered, contented, and happy life of a high- 
minded and effective man. Who, for instance, 
considers it to be a sort of treachery for the 
world at large to know something of the splendid 
and affectionate life of the Kingsley circle at 
Bversley Rectory, or of the Tennyson circle at 
Freshwater ? to look at pictures of the scene, to 
hear how the great men looked and moved and 
spoke ? And if it is not profanation to hear and 
see this in the pages of a biography, why is it a 



Interviewers 29 

profanation to read and see it in the pages of a 
magazine ? To object to it seems to me to be a 
species of prudish conventionality. 

Only you must be sure that you get a natural, 
simple, and unaffected picture of it all ; and what 
I object to in the interviews which I have been 
reading is that one gets an unnatural, affected, 
self-conscious, and pompous picture of it all. To 
go and pose in your favourite seat in a shrubbery 
or a copse, where you think out your books or 
poems, in order that an interviewer may take a 
snap-shot of you — especially if in addition you 
assume a look of owlish solemnity as though you 
were the pre}^ of great thoughts — that seems to me 
to be an infernal piece of posing. But still worse 
than that is the kind of conversation in which 
people are tempted to indulge in the presence of 
an interviewer. A man ought not to say to a 
wandering journalist whom he has never seen be- 
fore, in the presence of his own wife, that women 
are the inspirers and magnetisers of the world, 
and that he owes all that has made him what he 
is to the sweet presence and sympathetic tender- 
ness of his Bessy. This, it seems to me, is the 
lowest kind of melodrama. The thing may be 
perfectly true, the thought may be often in his 



30 The Altar Fire 

mind, but he cannot be accustomed to say such 
things in ordiiiarj^ life ; and one feels that when 
he says them to an interviewer he does it in a 
thoroughly self-conscious mood, in order that he 
may make an impressive figure before the public. 
The conversations in the interviews I have been 
reading give me the uncomfortable sense that 
they have been thought out beforehand from the 
dramatic point of view ; and indeed one earnestly 
hopes that this is the solution of the situation, 
because it would make one feel very faint if one 
thought that remarks of this kind w^ere the habit- 
ual utterances of the circle— indeed, it would cure 
one very effectually of the desire to know anything 
of the interiors of celebrated people, if one thought 
that they habitually talked like the heroes of a 
Sunday-school romance. That is why the read- 
ing of these interviews is so painful, because, in 
the first place, one feels sure that one is not realis- 
ing the daily life of these people at all, but only 
looking on at a tableau vivant prepared by them 
for the occasion ; and secondly, it makes one very 
unhappy to think that people of real eminence 
and effectiveness can condescend to behave in this 
affected way in order to win the applause of vulgar 
readers. One vaguely hopes, indeed, that some 



Interviewers 31 

of the dismal platitudes that the}^ are represented 
as uttering may have been addressed to them in 
the form of questions b\' the interviewer, and that 
they have merely stammered a shamefaced assent. 
It makes a real difference, for instance, whether 
as a matter of fact a celebrated authoress leads 
her golden-haired children up to an interviewer, 
and says, " These are my brightest jewels ; " or 
whether, when she tells her children to shake 
hands, the interviewer says, " No doubt these are 
your brightest jewels? " A mother is hardly in 
a position to return an indignant negative to such 
a question, and if she utters an idiotic affirmative, 
she is probably credited with the original remark 
in all its unctuousness ! 

It is a difficult question to decide what is the 
most simple-minded thing to do, if you are in the 
unhappy position of being requested to grant an 
interview for journalistic purposes. My own feel- 
ing is that if people really wish to know how I 
live, what I wear, what I eat and drink, what 
books I read, what kind of a house I live in, they 
are perfectly welcome to know. It does not seem 
to me that it would detract from the sacredness of 
my home life, if a picture of my dining-room, with 
the table laid for luncheon in a very cramped per- 



32 The Altar Fire 

spective, or if a photogravure of a scrap of grass 
and shrubbery that I call my garden, were to be 
published in a magazine. All that is to a certain 
extent public already. I should not wish to have 
a photograph of myself in bed, or shaving, pub- 
lished in a magazine, because those are not mo- 
ments when I am inclined to admit visitors. 
Neither do I particularly want my private and 
informal conversation taken down and reproduced, 
because that often consists of opinions which are 
not my deliberate and thought-out utterances. 
But I hope that I should be able to talk simply 
and courteously to an interviewer on ordinary 
topics, in a w^ay that would not discredit me if it 
was made public ; and I hope, too, that decency 
would restrain me from making inflated and 
pompous remarks about my inner beliefs and 
motives, which were not in the least characteristic 
of my usual method of conversation. 

The truth is that what spoils these records is 
the desire on the part of worthy and active people 
to appear more impressive in ordinary life than 
they actually are ; it is a well-meant sort of hy- 
pocrisy, because it is intended, in a way, to influ- 
ence other people, and to make them think that 
celebrated people live habitually on a higher plane 



A Poet 33 

of intellect and emotion than they do actually live 
upon. My own experience of meeting great 
people is that they are as a rule, disappointingly 
like ordinary people, both in their tastes and iv 
their conversation. Very few men or women 
who are extremely effective in practical or artistic 
lines, have the energy or the vitality to expend 
themselves very freely in talk or social intercourse. 
They do not save themselves up for their speeches 
or their books ; but they give their best energies 
to them, and have little current coin of high 
thought left for ordinary life. The mischief is 
that these interviews are generally conducted by 
inquisitive and rhetorical strangers, not distin- 
guished for social tact or overburdened with good 
taste ; and so the whole occasion tends to wear a 
melodramatic air, which is fatal both to artistic 
effect as well as to simple propriety. 

October^, 1888. 
I^et me set against my fashionable luncheon- 
party of a few weeks ago a visit which I owe no 
le:3s to my success, and which has been a true and 
deep delight to me. I had a note yesterday from 
a man whom I hold in great and deep reverence, 
a man whom I have met two or three times, a 
3 



34 The Altar Fire 

poet indeed, one of our true and authentic sing- 
ers. He writes that he is in the neighbourhood ; 
may he come over for a few hours and renew our 
acquaintance ? 

He came in the morning. One has only to 
set eyes upon him to know that one is in the 
presence of a hero, to feel that his poetry just 
streams from him like light from the sun ; that it 
is not the central warmth, but the flying rippling 
radiance of the outward-bound light, falling in 
momentary beauty on the common things about 
his path. He is a great big man, carelessly 
dressed, like a Homeric king. I liked everything 
about him from head to foot, his big carelessly 
worn clothes, the bright tie thrust loosely through 
a cameo ring ; his loose shaggy locks, his strong 
beard. His face, with its delicate pallor, and 
purely moulded features, had a youthful air of 
purity and health ; yet there was a dim trouble 
of thought on his brow, over the great smiling, 
flashing grey eyes. He came in with a sort of 
royal greeting, he flung his big limbs on a sofa ; 
he talked easily, quietly, lavishly, saying fine 
things with no effort, dropping a subject quickly 
if he thought it did not interest me ; sometimes 
flashing out with a quick gesture of impatience or 



The Poet 35 

gusto, enjoying life, every moment and every 
detail. His quick eyes, roving about, took in 
each smallest point, not in the weary feverish 
way in which I apprehend a new scene, but as 
though he liked everything new and unfamiliar, 
like an unsated child. He greeted Maud and the 
children with a kind of chivalrous tenderness and 
intimacy, as though he loved all pretty and tender 
things, and took joy in their nearness. He held 
Alec between his knees, and played with him 
while he talked. The children took possession 
of him, as if they had known him all their lives. 
And yet there was no touch of pose, no conscious- 
ness of greatness or vigour about him. He was 
as humble, grateful, interested, as though he 
were a poor stranger dependent on our bounty. I 
asked him in a quiet moment about his work. 
"No, I am writing nothing," he said with a 
smile, "I have said all I have got to say," — and 
then with a sudden humorous flash, " though I 
believe I should be able to write more if I could 
get decent paper and respectable type to print my 
work." I ventured to ask if he did not feel any 
desire to write ? " No," he said, " frankly I do 
not — the world is so full of pleasant things to do 
and hear and see, that I sometimes think mj^self 



36 The Altar Fire 

almost a fool for having spent so much time in 
scribbling. Do you know, " he went on, " a de- 
licious story I picked up the other day ? A man 
was travelling in some God-forsaken out-of-the- 
way place — I believe it was the Andes — and he 
fell in with an old podgy Roman priest who was 
going everywhere, in a state of perpetual fatigue, 
taking long expeditions every day, and returning 
worn-out in the evening, but perfectly content. 
The man saw a good deal of the priest, and asked 
him what he was doing. The priest smiled and 
said, ' Well, I will tell you. I had an illness 
some time ago and believed that I was going to 
die. One evening — I was half unconscious — I 
thought I saw some one standing by my bed. I 
looked, and it was a young man with a beautiful 
and rather severe face, whom I knew to be an 
angel, who was gazing at me rather strangel}^ I 
thought it was the messenger of death, and — for 
I was wishing to be gone and have done with it 
all — I said something to him about being ready 
to depart — and then added that I was waiting 
hopefully to see the joys of Paradise, the glory 
of the saints in light. He looked at me rather 
fixedly, and said, '*I do not know why you 
should say that, and why you should expect to 



A Parable for Writers 37 

take so much pleasure in the beauty of heaven, 
when 3^ou have taken so httle trouble to see any- 
thing of the beauty of earth ; " and then he left 
me ; and I reflected that I had always been doing 
my work in a dull humdrum way, in the same 
place all my life ; and I determined that, if I got 
well, I would go about and see something of the 
glory that is revealed to us, and not expect only 
the glory that shall be revealed to us.' It is a fine 
story," he went on, " and makes a parable for us 
writers, who are inclined to think too much about 
our work, and disposed to see that it is very good, 
like God brooding over the world." He sate for 
a little, smiling to himself. And then I plied 
him with questions about his writing, how his 
thoughts came to him, how he worked them out. 
He told me as if he was talking about some one 
else, half w^ondering that there could be anything 
to care about. I have heard many craftsmen talk 
about their work, but never one who talked with 
such detachment. As a rule, writers talk with a 
secret glee, and with a deprecating humilit}^ that 
deceives no one ; but the great man talked, not 
as if he cared to think about it, but because it 
happened to interest me. He strolled with me, 
he lunched ; and he thanked us when he went 



38 The Altar Fire 

away with an earnest and humble thankfulness, 
as though we had extended our hospitality to an 
obscure and unworthy guest. And then his praise 
of my own books — it was all so natural ; not as if 
he had come there with fine compliments pre- 
pared, with incense to bum ; but speaking about 
them as though they were in his mind, and he 
could not help it. "I read all you write, ' ' he 
said ; "ah, you go deep — you are a lucky fellow, 
to be able to see so far and so minutely, and to 
bring it all home to our blind souls^ He must be 
a terrible fellow to live with," he said, smiling at 
my wife. " It must be like being married to a 
doctor, and feeling that he knows so much more 
about one than one knows about oneself— but he 
sees what is best and truest, thank God; and says 
it with the voice of an angel, speaking softly out 
of his golden cloud." 

I can't say what words like these have meant 
to me ; but the visit itself, the sight of this strong, 
equable, good-humoured man, with no feverish 
ambitions, no hankering after fame or recognition, 
has done even more. I have heard it said that 
he is indolent, that he has not sufficient sense of 
responsibility for his gifts. But the man has 
done a great work for his generation ; he has 



Work to Live 39 

written poetry of the purest and finest quality. 
Is not that enough ? I cannot understand the 
mere credit we give to work, without any refer- 
ence to the object of the work, or the spirit in 
which it is done. We think with respect of the 
man who makes a fortune, or who fills an oflBcial 
post, the duties of which do nothing in particular 
for any one. It is a kind of obsession with us 
practical Westerners ; of course a man ought to 
contribute to the necessary work of the world ; 
but many men spend their lives in work which is 
not necessary ; and, after all, we are sent into the 
world to liv^e, and work is only a part of life. We 
work to live, we do not live to work. Even if 
we were all socialists, we should, I hope, have 
the grace to dig the gardens and make the clothes 
of our poets and prophets, so as to give them the 
leisure they need. 

I do not question the instinct of my hero 
in the matter ; he lives eagerly and peace- 
fully ; he touches into light the spirits of those 
who draw near to him ; and I admire a man 
who knows how to stop when he has done his 
best work, and does not spur and whip his 
tired mind into producing feebler, limper, duller 
work of the same kind ; how few of our 



40 The Altar Fire 

great writers have known when to hold their 
hand ! 

God be praised for great men ! My poet to-day 
has made me feel that life is a thing to be lived 
eagerly and high-heartedly ; that the world is 
full of beautiful, generous, kindly things, of free 
air and sunshine; and that we ought to find 
leisure to drink it all in, and to send our hearts 
out in search of love and beauty and God — for 
these things are all about us, if we could but feel 
and hear and see them. 

October 12, 1888. 
How absurd it is to say that a writer could not 
write a large, wise, beautiful book unless he had a 
great soul — it is almost like saying that an artist 
could not paint a fine face unless he had a fine 
face himself. It is all a question of seeing clearly, 
and having a skilled hand. There is nothing to 
make one believe that Shakespeare had a particu- 
larly^ noble or beautiful character ; and some of 
our greatest writers have been men of unbalanced, 
childish, immature temperaments, full of vanity 
and pettiness. Of course a man must be inter- 
ested in what he is describing ; but I think that a 
man of a naturally great, wise, and lofty spirit is 



The Artist's Equipment 41 

so disposed as a rule to feel that his qualities are 
instinctive, and so ready to credit other people 
with them, that it does not occur to him to depict 
those qualities. I am not sure that the best 
equipment for an artist is not that he should see 
and admire great and noble and beautiful things, 
and feel his own deficiency in them acutely, de- 
siring them with the desire of the moth for the 
star. The best characters in my own books have 
been, I am sure, the people least like myself, be- 
cause the creation of a character that one whole- 
heartedly admires, and that yet is far out of one's 
reach, is the most restful and delightful thing in 
the world. If one is unready in speech, thinking 
of one's epigrams three hours after the occasion 
for them has arisen, how pleasant to draw the 
man who says the neat, witty, appropriate, con- 
soling thing ! If one suffers from timidity, from 
meanness, from selfishness, what a delight to de- 
pict the man who is brave, generous, unselfish ! 
Of course the qualitj^ of a man's mind flows into 
and over his work, but that is rather like the varnish 
of the picture than its tints — it is the medium 
rather than the design. The artistic creation of 
ideal situations is often a sort of refuge to the man 
who knows that he makes a mess of the beautiful 



42 The Altar Fire 

and simple relations of life. The artist is fastid- 
ious and mood}', feeling the pressure of strained 
nerves and tired faculties, easily discouraged, 
disgusted by the superficial defect, the tiny blot 
that spoils alike the noble character, the charming 
prospect, the attractive face. He sees, let us say, 
a person with a beautiful face and an ugly hand. 
The normal person thinks of the face and forgets 
the hand. The artist thinks with pain of the 
hand and forgets the face. He desires an im- 
possible perfection, and flies for safety to the little 
world that he can make and sway. That is why 
artists, as a rule, love twilight hours, shaded 
rooms, half-tones, subdued hues, because what is 
common, staring, tasteless, is blurred and hidden. 
Men of rich vitality are generally too much occu- 
pied with life as it is, its richness, its variety, its 
colour and fragrance, to think wistfully of life as 
it might be. The unbridled, sensuous, luxurious 
strain, that one finds in so many artists, comes from 
a lack of moral temperance, a snatching at de- 
lights. They fear dreariness and ugliness so 
much that they welcome any intoxication of 
pleasure. But after all, it is clearness of vision 
that makes the artist, the power of disentangling 
the central feature from the surrounding details, 



Artist and Moralist 43 

the power of subordinating accessories, of seeing 
which minister to the innermost impression, and 
which distract and blur. An artist who creates a 
great character need not necessarily even desire to 
attain the great qualities which he discerns ; he 
sees them, as he sees the vertebrae of the mountain 
ridge under pasture and woodland, as he sees the 
structure of the tree under its mist of green ; but 
to see beauty is not necessarily to desire it ; for, 
as in the mountain and the tree, it may have no 
ethical significance at all, only a sj^mbolical 
meaning. The best art is inspired more by an 
intellectual force than by a vital sympathy. Of 
course to succeed as a novelist in England to-day, 
one must have a dash of the moralist, because an 
English audience is far more preoccupied with 
moral ideals than with either intellectual or artis- 
tic ideals. The English reader desires that love 
should be loyal rather than passionate ; he thinks 
ultimate success a more impressive thing than 
ultimate failure ; he loves sadness as a contrast and 
preface to laughter. He prefers that the patriarch 
Job should end by having a nice new family of 
children and abundant flocks, rather than that he 
should sink into death among the ashes, refusing 
to curse God for his reverses. His view of exist- 



44 The Altar Fire 

ence after death is that Dives should join Lazarus 
in Abraham's bosom. To succeed, one must 
compromise with this comfortable feeling, sacri- 
ficing, if needs be, the artistic conscience, because 
the place of the minstrel in England is after the 
banquet, when the warriors are pleasantly tired, 
have put off the desire for meat and drink, and the 
fire roars and crackles in the hearth. When 
Ruskin deserted his clouds and peaks, his sunsets 
and sunrises, and devoured his soul over the 
brutalities and uglinesses and sordid inequalities of 
life, it was all put down to the obscure pressure 
of mental disease. Ophelia does not sob and 
struggle in the current, but floats dreamily to 
death in a bed of meadow-flowers. 

October 21, 1888 
Let me try to recollect for my own amusement 
how it was that my last book grew up and took 
shape. How well I remember the day and the 
hour when the first thought came to me ! Some 
one was dining here, and told a story about a 
friend of his, and an unhappy misunderstanding 
between him and a girl whom he loved, or thought 
he loved. A figure, two figures, a scene, a conversa- 
tion, came into my head, absolutely and perfectly 



The Evolution of a Book 45 

life-like. I lay awake half the night, I remember, 
over it. How did those people come to be in ex- 
actly that situation ? How would it develop ? 
At first it was just the scene by itself, nothing 
more ; a room which filled itself with furniture. 
There were doors — where did they lead to ? There 
were windows — where did they look out ? The 
house was full, too, of other people, whose quiet 
movements I heard. One person entered the room, 
and then another ; and so the story opened out. 
I saw the wrong word spoken, I saw the mist of 
doubt and distress that filled the girl's mind ; I 
felt that I would have given anything to intervene, 
to explain ; but instead of speaking out, the girl 
confided in the wrong person, who had an old 
grudge against the man, so old that it had become 
instinctive and irrational. So the thing evolved it- 
self. Then at one time the story got entangled and 
confused. I could go no further. The characters 
were by this time upon the scene, but they could 
not speak. I then saw that I had made a mistake 
somewhere. The scaffolding was all taken down, 
spar by spar, and still the defect was not revealed. 
I must go, I saw, backwards ; and so I felt my 
way, like a man groping in the dark, into what 
had gone before, and suddenly came out into the 



46 The Altar Fire 

light. It was a mistake far back in the concep- 
tion. I righted it, and the story began to evolve 
itself again ; this time with a delicate certainty, 
that made me feel I was on the track at last. An 
impressive scene was sacrificed — it was there that 
my idea had gone wrong ! As to the writing of it, 
I cannot say it was an effort. It wrote itself I 
was not creating ; I was describing and selecting. 
There was one scene in particular, a scene which 
has been praised by all the reviewers. How did 
I invent it ? I do not know. I had no idea what 
the characters were to say when I began to write 
it, but one remark grew inevitably and surely out 
of the one before. I was never at a loss ; I never 
stuck fast ; indeed the one temptation which I 
firmly and constantly resisted was the temptation 
to write morning, noon, and night. Sometimes 
I had a horrible fear that I might not live to set 
down what was so clear in my mind ; but there is 
a certain freshness which comes from self-restraint. 
Day after day, as I strolled, and read, and talked, 
I used to hug myself at the thought of the beloved 
evening hours that were coming, when I should 
fling myself upon the book with a passionate zest, 
and feel it grow under my hand. And then it was 
done ! I remember writing the last words, and 



The Genesis of Beauty 47 

the conviction came upon me that it was the end. 
There was more to be told ; the story stretched 
on into the distance ; but it was as though the 
frame of the picture had suddenly fallen upon 
the canvas, and I knew that just so much and no 
more was to be seen. And then, as though to 
show me plainly that the work was over, the next 
day came an event which drew my mind off the 
book. I had had a period of unclouded health and 
leisure, everything had combined to help me, and 
then this event, of which I need not speak, came 
and closed the book at the right moment. 

What wonder if one grows fatalistic about writ- 
ing ; that one feels that one can only say what 
is given one to say ! And now, dry and arid as my 
mind is, I would give all I have for a renewal 
of that beautiful glow, which I cannot recover. It 
is misery — I can conceive no greater — to be bound 
hand and foot in this helpless silence. 

November 6, 1888. 
It is a joy to think of the way in which the 
best, most beautiful, most permanent things have 
stolen unnoticed into life. I like to think of 
Wordsworth, an obscure, poor, perverse, absurd 
man, living in the corner of the great house at 



48 The Altar Fire 

Alfoxden, walking in the moonlight with Cole- 
ridge, living on milk and eggs, utterly unaccount- 
able and puerile to the sensible man of affairs, 
while the two planned the Lyrical Ballads. I 
like to think of Keats, sitting lazily and discon- 
tentedly in the villa garden at Hampstead, with 
his illness growing upon him and his money 
melting away, scribbling the Ode to the Night- 
tjigale, and caring so little about the fate of it 
that it was only by chance, as it were, that the 
pencil scraps were rescued from the book where 
he had shut them. I love to think of Charlotte 
Bronte, in the bare kitchen of the little house in 
the grey, wind-swept village on the edge of the 
moorland, penning, in sickness and depression, 
the scenes oi Jane Eyre, without a thought that 
she was doing anything unusual or lasting. We 
surround such scenes with a heavenly halo, born 
of the afterglow of fame ; we think them roman- 
tic, beautiful, thrilled and flushed by passionate 
joy ; but there was little that was delightful about 
them at the time. 

The most beautiful of all such scenes is the tale 
of the maiden-wife in the stable at Bethlehem, 
with the pain and horror and shame of the tragic 
experience, in all its squalid publicity, told in 



Greatness in Art 49 

those simple words, which I never hear without a 
smile that is full of tears, "because there was no 
room for them in the inn . ' ' We poor human souls, 
knowing what that event has meant for the race, 
make the bare, ugly place seemly and lovely, sur- 
rounding the Babe with a tapestry of heavenly 
forms, holy lights, rapturous sounds; taking the 
terror and the meanness of the scene away, and 
thereby, by our clumsy handling, losing the 
divine .seal of the great mystery, the fact that 
hope can spring, in unstained and sublime radi- 
ance, from the vilest, lowest, meanest, noisiest 
conditions that can well be conceived. 

November 20, 1888. 

I wonder aimlessly what it is that makes a 
book, a picture, a piece of music, a poem, great. 
When any of these things has become a part of 
one's mind and soul, utterly and entirely familiar, 
one is tempted to think that the precise form of 
them is inevitable. That is a great mistake. 

Here is a tiny instance. I see that in the 
Lycidas Milton wrote: 

" Who would not sing for Lycidas ? He well knew 
Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme." 

The word "well" occurs in two MSS., and it 



50 The Altar Fire 

vSeems to have been struck out in the proof. The 
introduction of the word seems barbarous, un- 
metrical, an outrage on the beauty of the line. 
Yet Milton must have thought that it was needed, 
and have only decided by an after-thought that 
it was better away. If it had been printed so, 
we should equally have thought its omission 
barbarous and inartistic. 

And thus, to an artist, there must be many 
ways of working out a conception. I do not be- 
lieve in the theory that the form is so inevitable, 
because what great artist was ever perfectly con- 
tent with the form ? The greater the artist, the 
more conscious he probably is of the imperfection 
of his work ; and if it could be bettered, how is it 
then inevitable ? It is only our familiarity with 
it that gives it inevitableness. A beautiful build- 
ing gains its mellow outline by a hundred acci- 
dents of wear and weather, never contemplated by 
the designer's mind. We love it so, we would not 
have it otherwise; but we should have loved it 
just as intensely if it had been otherwise. Only 
a small part, then, of the greatness of artistic work 
is what we ourselves bring to it ; and it becomes 
great, not only from itself, but from the fact that 
it fits our minds as the dagger fits the sheath. 



Greatness in Art 51 

The greatness of a conception depends largely 
upon its being near enough to our own concep- 
tions, and yet a little greater, just as the vault of a 
great church gives one a larger sense of immen- 
sity than the sky with its sailing clouds. Indeed 
it is often the very minuteness of a conception 
rather than its vastness that makes it great. It 
must not be outside our range. As to the form, 
it depends upon some curious felicity of hand, 
and touch, and thought. Suppose that a great 
painter gave a rough pencil-sketch of a picture to 
a hundred students, and told them all to work it 
out in colour. Some few of the results would be 
beautiful, the majority would be still uninteresting 
and tame. 

Thus I am somewhat of a fatalist about art, 
because it seems to depend upon a lucky union of 
conception and technical instinct. The saddest 
proof of which is that many good and even great 
artists have not improved in greatness as their 
skill improved. The youthful works of genius 
are generally the best, their very crudities and 
stiffnesses adorable. 

The history of art and of literature alike seem to 
point to the fact that each artistic soul has a flow- 
ering period, which generally comes early, rarely 



52 The Altar Fire 

comes late ; and therefore the supreme artist ought 
to know when the bloom is over, when his good 
work is done. And then, I think, he ought to 
be ready to abjure his art, to drown his book, 
like Prospero, and set himself to live rather than 
to produce. But what a sacrifice to demand of a 
man, and how few attain it ! Most men cannot 
do without their work, and go on to the end 
producing more feeble, more tired, more manner- 
ised work, till they cloud the beauty of their 
prime by masses of inferior and uninspired 
production. 

November 2^, 1888. 

Soft wintry skies, touched with faintest gleams 
of colour, like a dove's wing, blue plains and 
heights, over the nearer woodland ; everywhere 
fallen rotting leaf and oozy water-channel; every- 
thing, tint and form, restrained, austere, delicate ; 
nature asleep and breathmg, gently in the cool 
airs; a tranquil and sober hopefulness abroad. 

I walked alone in deep woodland lanes, content 
for once to rest and dream. The country seemed 
absolutely deserted ; such labour as was going 
forward was being done in barn and byre ; beasts 
being fed, hurdles made. 



The Beggar's Child 53 

I passed in a solitary road a draggled ugly 
woman, a tramp, wheeling an old perambulator 
full of dingy clothes and sordid odds and ends ; 
she looked at me sullenly and suspiciously. 
Where she was going God knows : to camp, I 
suppose, in some dingle, with ugly company ; to 
beg, to lie, to purloin, perhaps to drink ; but by 
the perambulator walked a little boy, seven or 
eight years old, grotesquely clothed in patched 
and clums}^ garments ; he held on to the rim, 
dirty, unkempt ; but he was happy, too ; he was 
with his mother, of whom he had no fear ; he 
had been fed as the birds are fed ; he had no 
anxious thoughts of the future, and as he went, 
he crooned to himself a soft song, like the piping 
of a finch in a wayside thicket. What was in 
his tiny mind and heart ? I do not know ; but 
perhaps, a little touch of the peace of God. 

November 2'^^ 1888. 
Another visitor ! I am not sure that his visit 
is not a more distinguished testimonial than any 
I have yet receiv^ed. He is a young Don with a 
very brilliant record indeed. He wrote to ask if 
he might have the honour of calling, and of renew- 
ing a very slight acquaintance. He came and 



54 The Altar Fire 

conquered. I am still crushed and battered by 
his visit. I feel like a land that has been harried 
by an invading army. Let me see if, dizzy and 
unmanned as I am, I can recall some of the inci- 
dents of his visit. He has only been gone an 
hour, yet I feel as though a month had elapsed 
since he entered the room, since I was a moder- 
ately happy man. He is a very pleasant fellow 
to look at, small, trim, well-appointed, courteous, 
friendly, with a deferential air. His eyes gleam 
brightly through his glasses, and he has brisk 
dexterous gestures. He was genial enough till 
he settled down upon literature, and since then 
what waves and storms have gone over me ! I 
have or had a grovelling taste for books ; I pos- 
sess a large number, and I thought I had read 
them. But I feel now, not so much as if I had 
read the wrong ones, but as if those I had read 
were only, so to speak, the anterooms and corri- 
dors which led to the really important books — 
and of them, it seems, I know nothing. Epi- 
grams flowed from his tongue, brilliant character- 
isations, admirable j udgments. He had " placed' ' 
every one, and literature to him seemed like a 
great mosaic in which he knew the position of 
every cube. He knew all the movements and 



The Don's Visit 55 

tendencies of literature, and books seemed to him 
to be important, not because they had a message 
for the mind and heart, but because they illus- 
trated a tendency, or were a connecting link in a 
chain. He quoted poems I had never heard of, 
he named authors I had never read. He did it 
all modestly and quietly enough, with no parade 
(I want to do him full justice) but with an evi- 
dently growing disappointment to find that he 
had fallen among savages. I am sure that his 
conclusion was that authors of popular novels 
were very shallow, ill-informed people, and I am 
sure I wholly agreed with him. Good heavens, 
what a mind the man had, how stored wdth 
knowledge ! how admirably equipped ! Nothing 
that he had ever put away in his memory seemed 
to have lost its colour or outline ; and he knew, 
moreover, how to lay his hand upon everything. 
Indeed, it seemed to me that his mind was like 
an emporium, with everything in the world 
arranged on shelves, all new and varnished and 
bright, and that he knew precisely the place of 
everything. I became the prey of hopeless de- 
pression ; when I tried to join in, I confused 
writers and dates ; he set me right, not patronis- 
ingly but paternally. " Ah, but you will remem- 



56 The Altar Fire 

ber," he said, and, " Yes, but we must not over- 
look the fact that" — adding, with admirable 
humility, " Of course these are small points, but 
it is my business to know them." Now I find 
myself wondering why I disliked knowledge, 
communicated thus, so much as I did. It may 
be envy and jealousy, it may be humiliation and 
despair. But I do not honestly think that it is. 
I am quite sure I do not want to possess that kind 
of knowledge. It is the very sharpness and clear- 
ness of outline about it all that I dislike. The 
things that he knows have not become part of 
his mind in any way : they are stored away there, 
like walnuts ; and I feel that I have been pelted 
with walnuts, deluged and buried in walnuts. 
The things which my visitor knows have under- 
gone no change, they have not been fused and 
blended by his personality ; they have not affect- 
ed his mind, nor has his mind affected them. I 
do not wish to despise or to decry his knowledge ; 
as a lecturer, he must be invaluable ; but he 
treats literature as a purveyor might — it has not 
been food to him, but material and stock-in- 
trade. Some of the poetry we talked about — 
Elizabethan lyrics — grow in my mind like flowers 
in a copse ; in his mind they are planted in rows, 



Value of Literature 57 

with their botanical names on tickets. The 
worst of it is that I do not even feel encouraged 
to fill up my gaps of knowledge, or to master the 
history of tendency. I feel as if he had rather 
trampled down the hyacinths and anemones in 
my wild and uncultivated woodlands. I should 
like, in a dim way, to have his knowledge as well 
as my own appreciation, but I would not ex- 
change my knowledge for his. The value of a 
lyric or a beautiful sentence, for me, is its melody, 
its charm, its mysterious thrill ; and there are 
many books and poems, which I know to be 
excellent of their kind, but w^hich have no mean- 
ing or message for me. He seems to think that 
it is important to have complete texts of old 
authors, and I do not think that he makes much 
distinction between first-rate and second-rate 
work. In fact, I think that his view of literature 
is the sociological view, and he seems to care 
more about tendencies and influences than about 
the beauty and appeal of literature. I do not go 
so far as to say or to think that literature cannot 
be treated scientifically ; but I feel as I feel about 
the doctor in Balzac, I think, who, when his wife 
cried upon his shoulder, said, " Hold, I have 
analysed tears," adding that they contained so 



58 The Altar Fire 

much chlorate of sodium and so much mucus. 
The truth is that he is a philosopher, and that I 
am an individualist ; but it leaves me with an 
intense desire to be left alone in my woodland, 
or, at all events, not to walk there with a ruthless 
botanist! 

November 29, 1888. 
I have heard this morning of the suicide of an 
old friend. Is it strange to say that I have heard 
the news with an unfeigned relief, even gladness ? 
He was formerly a charming and brilliant crea- 
ture, full of enthusiasm and artistic impulses, 
fitful, wayward, wilful. Somehow he missed his 
footing ; he fell into disreputable courses ; he did 
nothing, but drifted about, planning many things, 
executing nothing. The last time I saw him was 
exquisitely painful ; we met by appointment, and 
I could see that he had tried to screw himself up 
for the interview by stimulants. The ghastly 
feigning of cheerfulness, the bloated face, the 
trembling hands, told the sad tale. And now 
that it is all over, the shame and the decay, the 
horror of his having died by his own act is a 
purely conventional one. One talks pompously 
about the selfishness of it, but it is one of the 



Suicide 59 

most unselfish things poor Dick has ever done ; 
he was a burden and a misery to all those who 
cared for him. Recovery was, I sincerely be- 
lieve, impossible. His was a fine, uplifted, even 
noble spirit in youth, but there were terrible 
hereditary influences at work, and I cannot hon- 
estly say that I think he was wholly responsible 
for his sins. If I could think that this act was 
done reasonably, in a solemn and recollected 
spirit, and was not a mere frightened scurrying 
out of life, I should be, I believe, wholly glad. I 
do not see that any one had anything to gain by 
his continuing to live ; and if reason is given us 
to use, to guide our actions by, it seems to me 
that we do right to obey it. Suicide may, of 
course, be a selfish and a cowardly thing, but 
the instinct of self-preservation is so strong that 
a man must always manifest a certain courage in 
making such a decision. The sacrifice of one's 
own life is not necessarily and absolutely an 
immoral thing, because it is always held to be 
justified if one's motive is to save another. It is 
purely, I believe, a question of motive ; whatever 
poor Dick's motives were, it was certainly the 
kindest and bravest thing that he could do; and 
I look upon his life as having been as naturally 



6o The Altar Fire 

ended as if he had died of disease or by an acci- 
dent. There is not a single one of his friends 
who would not have been thankful if he had died 
in the course of nature; and I for one am even 
more thankful as it is, because it seems to me 
that his act testifies to some tenderness, some 
consideration for others, as well as to a degree of 
resolution with which I had not credited him. 

Of course such a thing deepens the mystery of 
the world; but such an act as this is not to me 
half as mysterious as the action of an omnipotent 
Power which allowed so bright and gracious a 
creature as Dick was long ago to drift into ugly, 
sordid, and irreparable misery. Yet it seems to 
me now that Dick has at last trusted God com- 
pletely, made the last surrender, and put his 
miserable case in the Father's hands. 

December 2, 1888. 

As I came home to-night, moving slowly west- 
ward along deserted roads, among wide and soli- 
tary fields, in the frosty twilight, I passed a great 
pale fallow, in the far corner of which, beside a 
willow-shaded stream, a great heap of weeds was 
burning, tended bj^ a single lonely figure raking 
in the smouldering pile. A dense column of thick 



A Winter Sunset 6i 

smoke came volleying from the heap, that went 
softly and silently up into the orange-tinted sky ; 
some forty feet higher the smoke was caught by 
a moving current of air ; much of it ascended 
higher still, but the thin streak of moving wind 
caught and drew out upon itself a long weft of 
aerial vapour, that showed a delicate blue against 
the rose-flushed west. The long lines of leafless 
trees, the faint outlines of the low, distant hills 
upon the horizon seemed wrapped in meditative 
silence, dreaming wistfully, as the earth turned 
her broad shoulder to the night, and as the 
forlorn and chilly sunset faded by soft degrees. 
As the day thus died, the frost made itself felt, 
touching the hedgerows with rime, and crisping 
the damp road beneath my feet. The end drew 
on with a mournful solemnity : but the death of 
the light seemed a perfectly natural and beautiful 
thing, not an event to be grieved over or regretted, 
but all part of a sweet and grave progress, in 
which silence and darkness seemed, not an in- 
terruption to the eager life of the world, but a 
happy suspension of activity and life. I was 
haunted, as I often am at sunset, by a sense that 
the dying light was trying to show me some august 
secret, some gracious myster>% which would 



62 The Altar Fire 

silence and sustain the soul could it but capture 
it. Some great and wonderful presence seemed to 
hold up a hand, with a gesture half of invitation, 
half of compassion for my blindness Down there, 
beyond the lines of motionless trees, where the 
water gleamed golden in the reaches of the 
stream, the secret brooded, withdrawing itself 
resistlessly into the glowing west. A wistful 
yearning filled my soul to enter into that incom- 
municable peace. Yet if one could take the wings 
of the morning, and follow that flying zone of 
light, as swiftly as the air, one could pursue the 
same sunset all the world over, and see the fiery 
face of the sun ever sinking to his setting, over 
the broad furrows of moving seas, over tangled 
tropic forests, out to the shapeless wintry land of 
the south. Day by day has the same pageant 
enacted itself, for who can tell what millions of 
years. And in that vast perspective of weltering 
aeons has come the day when God has set me 
here, a tiny sentient point, conscious, in a sense, of 
it all, and conscious too that, long after I sleep in 
the dust, the same strange and beautiful thing 
will be displayed age after age. And yet it is all 
outside of me, all without. I am a part of it, yet 
with no sense of my unity with it. That is the 



The Dying Day 63 

marvellous and bewildering thing, that each tiny 
being like myself has the same sense of isolation, 
of distinctness, of the perfectly rounded life, com- 
plete faculties, independent existence. Another 
day is done, and leaves me as bewildered, as 
ignorant as ever, as aware of my small limitations, 
as lonely and uncomforted. 

Who shall show me why I love, with this deep 
and thirsty intensity, the array of gold and silver 
light, these mist-hung fields with their soft tints, 
the glow that flies and fades, the cold veils of 
frosty vapour ? Thousands of men and women 
have seen the sunset pass, loving it even as I love 
it. They have gone into the silence as I too shall 
go, and no hint comes back as to whether they 
understand and are satisfied. 

And now I turn in at the well-known gate, and 
see the dark gables of my house, with the high 
elms of the grove outlined against the pale sk5\ 
The cheerful windows sparkle with warmth and 
light, welcoming me, fresh from the chilly air, out 
of the homeless fields. With such array of cheer- 
ful usages I beguile my wondering heart, and 
chase away the wild insistent thoughts, the deep 
yearnings that thrill me. Thus am I bidden to 
desire and to be unsatisfied, to rest and marvel 



64 The Altar Fire 

not, to stay, on thivS unsubstantial show of peace 
and security, the aching and wondering will. 

December A,, 1888. 
Writing, like music, ought to have two dimen- 
sions — a horizontal movement of melody, a per- 
pendicular depth of tone. A person unskilled in 
music can only recognise a single horizontal 
movement, an air. One who is a little more 
skilled can recognise the composition of a chord. 
A real musician can read a score horizontally^ 
with all its contrasting and combining melodies. 
Sometimes one gets, in writing, a piece of hori- 
zontal structure, a firm and majestic melody, with 
but little harmony. Such are the great spare, 
strong stories of the old world. Modern writing 
tends to lay much more emphasis upon depth of 
colour, and the danger there is that such writing 
may become a mere structureless modulation. 
The perfect combination is to get firm structure, 
sparingly and economically enriched by colour, 
but colour always subordinated to structure. 
When I was young I undervalued structure and 
overvalued colour ; but it was a good training in 
a wa3^ because I learned to appreciate the vital 
necessity of structure, and I learned the command 



Structure and Colour 65 

of harmony. What is it that gives structure ? It 
is finn and clear intellectual conception, the grasp 
of form and proportion ; while colour is given by 
depth and richness of personality, by power of 
perception, and still more by the power of fusing 
perception with personality. The important thing 
here is that the thing perceived and felt should 
not simply be registered and pigeon-holed, but 
that it should become a cell of the writer's soul, 
respond to his pulse, be animated by his vital 
forces. 

Now, in my present state, I have lost my hold 
on melody in some way or other ; my creative 
intellectual power has struck work ; and when I 
try to exercise it, I can only produce vague text- 
ures of modulated thoughts — things melodious in 
themselves, but ineffective because they are iso- 
lated effects, instead of effects emphasising points, 
crises, climaxes. I have strained some mental 
muscle, I suppose ; but the unhappy part of the 
situation is that I have not lost the desire to 
use it. 

It would be a piece of good fortune for me now 

if I could fall in with some vigorous mind who 

could give me a lead, indicate a subject. But then 

the work that resulted would miss unity, I think. 

S 



66 The Altar Fire 

What I ought to be content to do is to garner 
more impressions ; but I seem to be surfeited of 
impressions. 

December lo, 1888. 

To-day I stumbled upon one of my old child- 
ish books — Grimm's Household Stories. I am 
ashamed to say how long I read it. These old 
tales, which I used to read as transcripts of mar- 
vellous and ancient facts, have, many of them, 
gained for me, through experience of life, a 
beautiful and symbolical value ; one in particu- 
lar, the tale of Karl Katz. 

Karl used to feed his goats in the ruins of an 
old castle, high up above the stream. Day after 
day one of his herd used to disappear, coming 
back in the evening to join the homeward pro- 
cession, very fat and well-liking. So Karl set 
himself to watch, and saw that the goat slipped 
in at a hole in the masonry. He enlarged the 
hole, and presently was able to creep into a dark 
passage. He made his way along, and soon 
heard a sound like a falling hailstorm. He 
groped his way thither, and found the goat, in 
the dim light, feeding on grains of corn which 
came splashing down from above. He looked 



Karl Katz 67 

and listened, and, from the sounds of stamping 
and neighing overhead, he became aware that the 
grain was falUng through the chinks of a paved 
floor from a vStable inside the hill. I forget at 
this moment what happened next — the story is 
rich in inconsequent details— but Karl shortly 
heard a sound like thunder, which he discerned 
at last to be persons laughing and shouting and 
running in the vaulted passages. He stole on, 
and found, in an open, grassy place, great merry 
men playing at bowls. He was welcomed and set 
down in a chair, though he could not even lift 
one of the bowls when invited to join in the 
game. A dwarf brought him wine in a cup, 
which he drank, and presently he fell asleep. 

When he woke, all was silent and still ; he 
made his way back ; the goats were gone, and it 
was the earty morning, all misty and dewy 
among the ruins, when he squeezed out of the 
hole. 

He felt strangely haggard and tired, and 
reached the village only to find that seventy 
years had elapsed, and that he was an old and 
forgotten man, with no place for him. He had lost 
his home, and though there were one or two old 
grandfathers, spent and dying, who remembered 



68 The Altar Fire 

the day when he was lost, and the search made 
for him, yet now there was no rocm for the old 
man. The gap had filled up, life had flowed on. 
They had grieved for him, but thej^ did not want 
him back. He disturbed their arrangements ; he 
was another useless mouth to feed. 

The pretty old story is full of parables, sad and 
sweet. But the kernel of the tale is a warning to 
all who, for any wilfulness or curiosity, however 
romantic or alluring the quest, forfeit their place 
for an instant in the world. You cannot return. 
lyife accommodates itself to its losses, and how- 
ever sincerely a man may be lamented, yet if he 
returns, if he tries to claim his place, he is in the 
way, de trop. No one has need of him. 

An artist has most need of this warning, be- 
cause he of all men is tempted to enter the dark 
place in the hill, to see wonderful things and to 
drink the oblivious wine. I^et him rather keep 
his hold on the world, at whatever sacrifice. Be- 
cause by the time that he has explored the home 
of the merry giants, and dreamed his dream, the 
world to which he tries to tell the vision will 
heed it not, but treat it as a fanciful tale. 

All depends on the artist being in league with 
his day ; if he is born too early or too late, he has 



In League with One's Day 69 

no hold on the world, no message for it. Either 
he is a voice out of the past, an echo of old joys 
piping a forgotten message, or he is fanciful, 
unreal, visionary, if he sees and tries to utter 
what shall be. By the time that events confirm 
his foresight, the vitality of his prophecy is gone, 
and he is only looked at with a curious admira- 
tion, as one that had a certain clearness of vision, 
but no more ; he is called into court by the 
historian of tendency, but he has had no hold on 
living men. 

One sees men of great artistic gifts who suffer 
from each of these disadvantages. One sees poets, 
bom in a prosaic age, who would have won high 
fame if they had been born in an age of poets. 
And one sees, too, men who seem to struggle 
with big, unintelhgible thoughts, thoughts which 
do not seem to fit on to anything existing. The 
happy artist is the man who touches the note 
which awakens a responsive echo in many 
hearts ; the man who instinctivelj' uses the me- 
dium of the time, who neither regrets the old 
nor portends the new. 

Karl Katz must content himself, if he can find 
a corner and a crust, with the memory of the day 
when the sun lay hot among the ruins, with the 



70 The Altar Fire 

thought of the pleasant coolness of the vault, the 
leaping shower of corn, the thunder of the im- 
prisoned feet, the heroic players, the heady wine. 
That must be enough for him. He has had a 
taste, let him remember, of marvels hidden 
from common eyes and ears. Let it be for him to 
muse in the sun, and to be grateful for the space 
of recollection given him. If he had lived the 
life of the world, he would but have had a trea- 
sure of simple memories, much that was sordid, 
much that was sad. 

But now he has his own dreams, and he must 
pay the price in heaviness and dreariness! 

December 14, 1888. 
The danger of art as an occupation is that one 
uses life, looks at life, as so much material for 
one's art. Life becomes a province of art, instead 
of art being a province of life. That is all a sad 
mistake, perhaps an irreparable mistake ! I 
walked to-day on the crisp frozen snow, down the 
valley, by field-paths, among leafless copses and 
wood-ends. The stream ran dark and cold, be- 
tween its brambly banks ; the snow lay pure and 
smooth on the high-sloping fields. It made 
a heart of whiteness in the covert, the trees all 



Beauty of the Seasons 71 

delicately outlined, the hazels weaving an intricate 
pattern. All perfectly and exquisitely beautiful. 
Sight after sight of subtle and mysterious beauty, 
vignette after vignette, picture after picture. If I 
could but sing it, or say it, depict or record it, I 
thought to myself ! Yet I could not analyse what 
the desire was. I do not think I wished to inter- 
pret the sight to others, or even to capture it for 
myself. No matter at what season of the year I 
pass through the valley, it is always filled from 
end to end with beauty, ever changing, perishing, 
ever renewing itself. In spring, the copse is full 
of tender points of green, uncrumpling and uncurl- 
ing. The hyacinths make a carpet of steely blue, 
the anemones weave their starred tapestry. In 
the summer, the grove hides its secret, dense with 
leaf, the heavy-seeded grass rises in the field, the 
tall flowering plants make airy mounds of colour ; 
in autumn, the woods blaze with orange and gold, 
the air is heavy with the scent of the dying leaf. 
In winter, the eye dwells with delight upon the 
spare low tints ; and when the snow falls and lies, 
as it does to-day, the whole scene has a still and 
mournful beauty, a pure economy of contrasted 
light and gloom. Yet the trained perception of 
the artist does not dwell upon the thought of the 



72 The Altar Fire 

place as upon a perpetual feast of beauty and 
delight. Rather, it shames me to reflect, one 
dwells upon it as a quarr^^ of effects, where one 
can find and detach the note of background, the 
sweet symbol that will lend point and significance 
to the scene that one is labouring at. Instead of 
being content to gaze, to listen, to drink in, one 
thinks only what one can carry away and make 
one's own. If one's art were purely altruistic, if 
one's aim were to emphasise some sweet aspect 
of nature which the careless might otherwise over- 
look or despise ; or even if the sight haunted one 
like a passion, and fed the heart with hope and 
love, it would be well. But does one in realit}^ 
feel either of these purposes ? Speaking candidly, 
I do not. I care very little for my message to 
the world. It is true that I have a deep and 
tender love for the gracious things of earth ; but 
I cannot be content with that. One thinks of 
Wordsworth, rapt in contemplation, sitting silent 
for a whole morning, his eyes fixed upon the pool 
of the moorland stream, or the precipice with the 
climbing ashes. It was like a religion to him, a 
communion with something holy and august 
which in that moment drew near to his soul. 
But with me it is different. To me the passion is 



The Artist's Desire T2> 

to express it, to embalm it, in phrase or word, not 
for my pride in any art, not for any desire to give 
the treasure to others, but simply, so it seems, in 
obedience to a tyrannous instinct to lend the 
thought, the sight, another shape. I despair of 
defining the feeling. It is partly a desire to arrest 
the fleeting moment, to give it permanence in the 
ruinous lapse of things, the same feeling that made 
old Herrick say to the daffodils, ' * We weep to see 
you haste away so soon." Partly the joy of the 
craftsman in making something that shall please 
the eye and ear. It is not the desire to create, as 
some say, but to record. For when one writes an 
impassioned scene, it seems no more an act of 
creation than one feels about one's dreams. The 
wonder of dreams is that one does not make 
them ; they come upon one with all the pleasure 
of surprise and experience. They are there ; and 
so, when one indulges imagination, one does not 
make, one merely tells the dream. It is this that 
makes art so strange and sad an occupation, that 
one lives in a beautiful world, which does not 
seem to be of one's own designing, but from which 
one is awakened, in terror and disgust, by bodily 
pain, discomfort, anxiety, loss. Yet it seems 
useless to say that life is real and imagination 



74 The Altar Fire 

unreal. They are both there, both real. The 
danger is to use life to feed the imagination, not 
to use imagination to feed life. In these sad 
weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The 
world of imagination, in which I have lived and 
moved, has crumbled into pieces over my head ; 
the wind and rain beat through the flimsy dwell- 
ing, and I must rise and go. I have sported 
with life as though it were a pretty plaything ; 
and I find it turns upon me like a wild beast, 
gaunt, hungry, and angry. I am terrified by its evil 
motions, I sicken at its odour. That is the deep 
mystery and horror of life, that one yields un- 
erringly to blind and imperious instincts, not 
knowing which may lead us into green and fertile 
pastures of hope and happy labour, and which 
may draw us into thorny wildernesses. The old 
fables are true, that one must not trust the smiHng 
presences, the beguiling words. Yet how is one 
to know which of the forms that beckon us we 
may trust. Must we learn the lesson by sad 
betrayals, by dark catastrophes ? I have wandered, 
it seems, along a flowery path — and yet I have 
not gathered the poisonous herbs of sin ; I have 
loved innocence and goodness ; but for all that 
I have followed phantoms, and now that it is too 



The Artistic Criterion 75 

late to retrace my steps, I find that I have been 

betrayed. I feel 

*' As some bold seer in a trance 
Seeing all his own mischance." 

Well, at least one may still be bold ! 

December 22, 1888. 

Perhaps my trial comes to me that it may test 
my faith in art ; perhaps to show me that the 
artist's creed is a false and shallow one after all. 
What is it that we artists do ? In a happy hour I 
should have said glibly that we discern and in- 
terpret beauty. But now it seems to me that no 
man can ever live upon beaut3^ I think I have 
gone wrong in busying myself so ardentl}^ in try- 
ing to discern the quality of beauty in all things. 
I seem to have submitted everything, — virtue, 
honour, life itself,— to that test. I appear to my- 
self like an artist who has devoted himself en- 
tirely to the appreciation of colour, who is 
suddenly struck colour-blind ; he sees the forms 
of things as clearly as ever, but they are dreary 
and meaningless. I seem to have tried every- 
thing, even conduct, by an artistic standard, and 
the quality w^hich I have devoted myself to dis- 
cerning has passed suddenly out of life. And my 



76 The Altar Fire 

mistake has been all the more grievous, because 
I have alwa3^s believed that it was life of which I 
was in search. There are three great writers — 
two of them artists as well — whose personality- 
has always interested me profoundly — Ruskin, 
Carlyle, Rossetti. But I have never been able 
wholly to admire the formal and deliberate pro- 
ducts of their minds. Ruskin as an art-critic — 
how profoundly unfair, prejudiced, unjust he is ! 
He has made up his mind about the merit of an 
artist ; he will lay down a principle about accur- 
acy in art, and to what extent imagination may 
improve upon visioU ; and then he will abuse 
Claude for modifying a scene, in the same breath, 
and for the same reasons, with which he will praise 
Turner for exaggerating one. He will use the 
same stick that he throws for one dog to fetch, to 
beat another dog that he dislikes. Of course he 
says fine and suggestive things by the way, and 
he did a great work in inspiring people to look 
for beauty, though he misled many feeble spirits 
into substituting one convention for another. I 
cannot read a page of his former writings without 
anger and disgust. Yet what a beautiful, pa- 
thetic, noble spirit he had ! The moment he 
writes, simply and tenderl}', from his own har- 



Ruskin and Carlyle 77 

rowed heart, he becomes a dear and honoured 
friend. In Prcsterita, in his diaries and letters, 
in his famiHar and unconsidered utterances, he 
is perfectly delightful, conscious of his own wa}^- 
wardness and whimsicality ; but when he lectures 
and dictates, he is like a man blowing wild blasts 
upon a shrill trumpet. Then Carlyle — his big 
books, his great tawdry, smoky pictures of scenes, 
his loud and clumsy moralisations, his perpetual 
thrusting of himself into the foreground, like 
some obstreperous showman ; he wearies and 
dizzies my brain with his raucous clamour, his 
uncouth convolutions. I saw the other day a 
little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, 
the waves beating over it ; three w^arriors in the 
boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and mis- 
ery. Above, through a rent in the clouds, is 
visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demon- 
iacal leer on his face, beating upon a number of 
drums. The picture is entitled "The Thunder- 
God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to 
me like that ; he has no pity for humanity, he 
only likes to add to its terrors and its bewilder- 
ment. He preached silence and seclusion to men 
of activity, energy to men of contemplation. He 
was furious, whatever humanity did, whether it 



78 The Altar Fire 

slept or waked. His message is the message of 
the booming gale, and the swollen cataract. Yet 
in his diaries and letters, what splendid percep- 
tion, what inimitable humour, what rugged 
emotion ! I declare that Carlyle's thumb-nail 
portraits of people and scenes are some of the 
most admirable things ever set down on paper. I 
love and admire the old furious, disconsolate, 
selfish fellow with all my heart ; though he was 
a bad husband, he was a true friend, for all his 
discordant cries and groans. Then there is Ros- 
setti — a man who wrote a few incredibly beauti- 
ful poems, and in whom one seems to feel the 
inner fire and glow of art. Yet many of his pic- 
tures are to me little but voluptuous and wicked 
dreams ; and his later sonnets are full of poison- 
ous fragrance — poetry embroidered and scented, 
not poetry felt. What a generous, royal prodigal 
nature he had, till he sank into his drugged and 
indulgent seclusion ! Here then are three great 
souls. Ruskin, the pure lover of things noble 
and beautiful, but shadowed by a prim perversity, 
an old-maidish delicacy, a petulant despair. 
Carlyle, a great, rugged, and tumultuous heart, 
brutalised by ill-health, morbidity, selfishness. 
Rossetti, a sort of day-star in art, stepping forth 



Meaning of Catastrophes 79 

like an angel, to fall lower than I^ucifer. What 
is the meaning of these strange catastrophes,, 
these noble natures so infamously hampered ? In 
the three cases, it seems to be that melancholy, 
brooding over a world, so exquisitely designed 
and yet so unaccountably marred, drove one to 
madness, one to gloom, one to sensuality. We 
believe or try to believe that God is pure and 
loving and true, and that His Heart is with all 
that is noble and hopeful and high. Yet the more 
generous the character, the deeper is the fall ! Can 
vsuch things be meant to show us that we have no 
concern with art at all ; and that our only hope 
is to cling to bare, austere, simple, uncomforted 
virtue ? Ought we to try to think of art only as 
an innocent amusement and diversion for our 
leisure hours? As a quest to which no man 
may vow himself, save at the cost of walking in 
a vain shadow all his days ? Ought we to steel 
our hearts against the temptation, which seems to 
be implanted as deep as anything in m}^ own 
nature — nay, deeper— that what one calls ugliness 
and bad taste is of the nature of sin ? But what 
then is the meaning of the tyrannous instinct to 
select and to represent, to capture beauty ? Ought 
it to be enough to see beauty in the things around 



8o The Altar Fire 

us, in flowers and light, to hear it in the bird's 
song and the falling stream — to perceive it thus 
gratefully and thankfully, and to go back to our 
simple lives ? I do not know ; it is all a great 
mystery ; it is so hard to believe that God should 
put these ardent, delicious, sweet, and solemn in- 
stincts into our spirits, simply that we may learn 
our error in following them. And yet I feel with 
a sad certainty to-day that I have somehow 
missed the way, and that God cannot or will not 
help me to find it. Are we then bidden and 
driven to wander? Or is there indeed some 
deep and perfect secret of peace and tranquillit}^ 
which we are meant to find ? Does it perhaps lie 
open to our eyes — as when one searches a table 
over and over for some familiar object, which all 
the while is there before us, plain to touch or 
sight ? 

January 3, 1889. 
There is a tiny vignette of Blake's, a woodcut, 
I think, in which one sees a ladder set up to the 
crescent moon from a bald and bare comer of 
the globe. There are two figures that seem to 
be conversing together ; on the ladder itself, just 
setting his foot to the lowest rung, is the figure 



The World's Desire 8i 

of a man who is beginning to climb in a furious 
hurry. '' I want, I want,"' saj-s the little legend 
beneath. The execution is trivial enough ; it is 
all done, and not ver}^ well done, in a space not 
much bigger than a postage-stamp — but it is one 
of the many cases in which Blake, by a minute 
symbol, expressed a large idea. One wonders if 
he knew how large an idea it was. It is a symbol 
for me of all the vague, eager, intense longing of 
the world, the desire of satisfaction, of peace, of 
fulfilment, of perfection ; the power that makes 
people passionately religious, that makes souls 
so much greater and stronger than they appear 
to themselves to be. It is the thought that makes 
us at moments believe intensely and urgently in 
the justice, the mercy, the perfect love of God, 
even at moments when everything round us ap- 
pears to contradict the idea. It is the outcome of 
that strange right to happiness which we all feel, 
the instinct that makes us believe of pain and grief 
that they are abnormal, and will be, must be, set 
right and explained somewhere. The thought 
comes to me most poignantly at sunset, when 
trees and chimneys stand up dark against the 
fiery glow, and when the further landscape lies 
smiling, lapt in mist, on the verge cf dreams; 



82 The Altar Fire 

that moment always seems to speak to me with a 
personal voice. "Yes," it seems to say, " I am 
here and everywhere — larger, sw^eeter, truer, 
more gracious than anything you have ever 
dreamed of or hoped for — but the time to know 
all is not yet." I cannot explain the feeling or 
interpret it; but it has sometimes seemed to me, 
in such moments, that I am, in very truth, not a 
child of God, but a part of Himself — separated 
from Him for a season, imprisoned for some 
strange and beautiful purpose, in the chains of 
matter, remembering faintly and obscurely some- 
thing that I have lost, as a man strives to recall a 
beautiful dream that has visited him. It is then 
that one most desires to be strong and free, to be 
infinitely patient and tender and loving, to be 
different. And then one comes back to the world 
with a sense of jar and shock, to broken pur- 
poses, and dull resentments, to unkindly thoughts, 
and people who do not even pretend to wish one 
well. I have been trying with all my might in 
these desolate weeks to be brave and afiectionate 
and tender, and I have not succeeded. It is easy 
enough, when one is happily occupied for a part 
of the day, but when one is restless, dissatisfied, 
impatient, ineffective, it is a constant and a weary 



An Unhappy Mortal 83 

effort. And what is more, I dislike sjunpathy. I 
would rather bear a thing in solitude and silence. 
I have no self-pity, and it is humiliating and 
weakening to be pitied. Yet of course Maud 
knows that I am unhappy; and the wTetched- 
ness of it is that it has introduced a strain into 
our relations which I have never felt before. I 
sit reading, trying to pass the hours, trying to 
stifle thought. I look up and see her eyes fixed 
on me full of compassion and love — and I do not 
want compassion. Maud knows it, divines it 
all; but she can no more keep her compassion 
hidden than I can keep m}^ unrest hidden. I 
have grown irritable, suspicious, hard to live 
with. Yet with all my heart and soul I desire 
to be patient, tolerant, kindly, sweet-tempered, 
FitzGerald said somewhere that ill-health makes 
all of us villains. This is the worst of it, that 
for all my efforts I get weaker, more easily vexed, 
more discontented. I do not and cannot trace 
the smallest benefit which results to me or any 
one else from my unhappiness. The shadow of 
it has even fallen over my relations with the 
children, who are angelically good. Maggie with 
that divine instinct which women possess— what 
a perfectly beautiful thing it is ; — has somehow 



84 The Altar Fire 

contrived to discern that things are amiss with 
me, and I can perceive that she tries all that her 
little heart and mind can devise to please, soothe, 
interest me. But I do not want to be ministered 
to, exquisite as the instinct is in the child : and 
all the time I am as far off my object as ever. I 
cannot work, I cannot think. I have said fine 
things in my books about the discipline of reluc- 
tant suffering ; and now my feeling is that I could 
bear any other kind of trial better. It seems 
to be given to me with an almost demoniacal 
prescience of what should most dishearten me. 

" It would not school the shuddering will 
To patience, were it sweet to bear," 

says an old poet ; and it is true, I have no doubt ; 
but, good God, to think that a man, so richly 
dowered as I am with every conceivable blessing, 
should 3^et have so small a reserve of faith and 
patience ! Even now I can frame epigrams about 
it. " To learn to be content not to be content " 
— that is the secret — but meanwhile I stumble 
in dark paths, through the grove nullo pene- 
trabilis astro, where men have wandered be- 
fore now. It seems fine and romantic enough, 
when one thinks of another soul in torment. 



A Descent into Hell 85 

One remembers the old sage, reading quietly at a 
sunset hour, who had a sudden vision of the fate 
that should befall him. His book falls from his 
hands, he sits there, a beautiful venerable figure 
enough, staring heavily into the void. It makes 
me feel that I shall never dare to draw the 
picture of a man in the grip of suffering again ; 
I have had so little of it in my life, and I have 
drawn it with a luxurious artistic emotion. I re- 
member once saying of a friend that his work was 
light and trivial, because he had never descended 
into hell. Now that I have myself set foot there, 
I feel art and love, and life itself, shrivel in the re- 
lentless chill — for it is icy cold and drearily bright 
in hell, not dark and fiery, as poets have sung ! 
I feel that I could wrestle better with the loss of 
health, of wealth, of love, for there would be 
something to bear, some burden to lift. Now 
there is nothing to bear, except a blank purpose- 
lessness which eats the heart out of me. I am in 
the lowest place, in the darkness and the deep. 

January^, 1889. 
Snow underfoot this morning ; and a brown 
blink on the horizon which shows that more is 
coming. I have the odd feeling that I have never 



86 The Altar Fire 

really seen my house before, the snow lights it all 
up so strangely, tinting the ceilings a glowing 
white, touching up high lights on the top of 
picture-frames, and throwing the lower part of the 
rooms into a sort of pleasant dusk. 

Maud and the children went oif this afternoon 
to an entertainment. I accompanied them to the 
door ; what a pretty effect the snow background 
gives to young faces ; it lends a pretty morbidezza 
to the colouring, a sort of very delicate green 
tinge to the paler shades. That does not sound 
as if it would be beautiful in a human face, but 
it is ; the faces look like the child-angels of Botti- 
celli, and the pink and rose flush of the cheeks is 
softly enriched and subdued ; and then the soft 
warmth of fair and curly hair is delicious. I was 
happy enough with them, in a sort of surface 
happiness. The little waves at the top of the 
mind broke in sunlight ; but down below, the 
cold dark water sleeps still enough. I left them, 
and took a long trudge among the valleys. Oh 
me ! how beautiful it all was ; the snowy fields, 
with the dark copses and leafless trees among 
them ; the rich clean light everywhere, the 
world seen as through a dusky crystal. Then 
the sun went down in state, and the orange sky 



A Wintry World ^7 

through the dark tree-stems brought me a thrill 
of that strange yearning desire for something — I 
cannot tell what — that seems so near and yet so 
far away. Yet I was sad enough too ; my mind 
works like a mill with no corn to grind. I can 
devise nothing, think of nothing. There beats in 
my head a verse of a little old Latin poem, by an 
unhappy man enough, in whose sorrowful soul 
the delight of the beautiful moment was for ever 
poisoned by the thought that it was passing, pass- 
ing ; and that the spirit, whatever joy might be in 
store for it, could never again be at the same 
sweet point of its course. The poem is about a 
woodcock, a belated bird that haunted the hang- 
ing thickets of his Devonshire home. ''Ah, hap- 
less bird,'' he says, ''for you to-day Kiiig Decefnber 
is stripping these oaks ; nor any hope of food do the 
hazel-thickets afford^ That is my case. I have 
lingered too late, trusting to the ease and prodi- 
gal wealth of the summer, and now the woods 
stand bare about me, while my comrades have 
taken wing for the South. The beady eye, the 
puffed feathers grow sick and dulled with hunger. 
Why cannot I rest a little in the beauty all about 
me ? Take it home to my shivering soul ? Nay, 
I will not complain, even to myself. 



88 The Altar Fire 

I came back at sundown, through the silent 
garden, all shrouded and muffled with snow. The 
snow lay on the house, outlining the cornices, 
cresting the roof-tiles, crusted sharply on the 
cupola, whitening the tall chimney-stacks. The 
comfortable smoke went up into the still air, and 
the firelight darted in the rooms. What a sense 
of beautiful permanence, sweet hopefulness, fire- 
side warmth it all gave ; and it is real as well. 
No life that I could have devised is so rich 
in love and tranquillity as mine ; everything 
to give me content, except the contented mind. 
Why cannot I enter, seat myself in the warm 
firelight, open a book, and let the old beautiful 
thoughts flow into my mind, till the voices 
of wife and children return to gladden me, and 
I listen to all that they have seen and done ? 
Why should I rather sit, like a disconsolate 
child among its bricks, feebly and sadly plan- 
ning new combinations and fantastic designs ? 
I have done as much and more than most 
of my contemporaries ; what is this insensate 
hunger of the spirit that urges me to work that 
I cannot do, for rewards that I do not want? 
Why cannot I be content to dream and drowse 
a little ? 



Loss of Inspiration 89 

" Rest, then, and rest 
And think of the best, 
Twixt summer and spring, 
When no birds sing." 

That is what I desire to do, and cannot. It is 
as though some creeper that had enfolded and 
enringed a house with its tendrils, creeping 
under window-ledges and across mellow brick- 
work, had been suddenly cut off at the root, and 
hung faded and lustreless, not even daring to be 
torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is 
alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, 
except that my heart seems hollow at the core. 

January 12, 1889. 
I have had a very bad time of late. It seems 
futile to say anything about it, and the plain man 
would rub his eyes, and wonder where the misery 
lay. I have been perfectly well, and everything 
has gone smoothly ; but I cannot write. I have 
begun half-a-dozen books. I have searched my 
notes through and through. I have sketched 
plots, written scenes. I cannot go on with any of 
them. I have torn up chapters with fierce dis- 
gust, or have laid them quietly aside. There is 
no vitality in them. If I read them aloud to any 
one, he would wonder what was wrong— they are 



90 The Altar Fire 

as well written as my other books, as amusing, as 
interesting. But it is all without energy or inven- 
tion, it is all worse than my best. The people 
are puppets, their words are pumped up out of a 
stagnant reservoir. Everything I do reminds me 
of something I have done before. If I could 
bring myself to finish one of these books, I could 
get money and praise enough. Many people 
would not know the difference. But the real and 
true critic would see through them ; he would 
discern that I had lost the secret. I think that 
perhaps I ought to be content to work dully and 
faithfully on, to finish the poor dead thing, to 
compose its dead limbs decently, to lay it out. 
But I cannot do that, though it might be a moral 
discipline. I am not conscious of the least men- 
tal fatigue, or loss of power — quite the reverse. I 
hunger and thirst to write, but I have no inven- 
tion. 

The worst of it is that it reveals to me how much 
the whole of my life was built up round the hours 
I gave to writing. I used to read, write letters, do 
business in the morning, holding myself back from 
the beloved task, not thinking over it, not antici- 
pating the pleasure, yet aware that some secret 
germination was going on among the cells of 



Adrift 91 

the brain. Then came the afternoon, the walk 
or ride, and then at last after tea arrived the 
blessed hour. The chapter was all ready to be 
written, and the thing flowed equably and clearly 
from the pen. The passage written, I would turn 
to some previous chapter, which had been type- 
written, smooth out the creases, enrich the dia- 
logue, retouch the descriptions, omit, correct, 
clarify. Perhaps in the evening I would read a 
passage aloud, if we were alone, and how often 
would Maud with her perfect instinct, lay her 
finger on a weak place, show me that something 
w^as abrupt or lengthy, expose an unreal emotion, 
or, best of all, generously and whole-heartedly 
approve. It seems now, looking back upon it, 
that it was all impossibly happy and delightful, 
too good to be true. Yet I have everything that 
I had, except my unhappy writing ; and the 
want of it poisons life. I no longer seem to lie 
pleasantly in ambush for pretty traits of character, 
humorous situations, delicate nuances of talk. I 
look blankly at garden, field, and wood, because 
I cannot draw from them the setting that I want. 
Even my close and intimate companionship with 
Maud seems to have suffered, for I was like a 
child, bringing the little w^onders that it finds by 



92 The Altar Fire 

the hedgerow to be looked at by a loving eye. 
Maud is angelically tender, kind, sweet. She 
tells me only to wait ; she draws me on to talk ; 
she surrounds me with love and care. And in the 
midst of it all I sit, in dry misery, hating myself 
for my feebleness and cowardice, keeping as far as 
possible my pain to myself, brooding, feverishly 
straining, struggling hopelessly to recover the 
clue. The savour has gone out of life ; I feel 
widowed, frozen, desolate. How often have I 
tranquilly and good-humouredly contemplated 
the time when I need write no more, when my 
work should be done, when I should have said all 
I had to say, and could take life as it came, so- 
berly and wisely. Now that the end has come of 
itself, I feel like a hopeless prisoner, with death 
the only escape from a bitter and disconsolate 
solitude. 

Can I not amuse myself with books, pictures, 
talk ? No, because it is all a purposeless passing of 
dreary hours. Before, there was always an object 
ahead of me, a light to which I made my way ; 
and all the pleasant incidents of life were things 
to guide me, and to beguile the plodding path. 
Now I am adrift ; I need go neither forwards nor 
backwards ; and the things which before were 



My Desire 93 

gentle and quiet occupations have become duties 
to be drearily fulfilled. 

I have put down here exactly what I feel. It 
is not cowardice that makes me do it, but a desire 
to face the situation, exactly as it is. Forsan et 
hcBC olim meminisse juiahii ! And in any case 
nothing can be done by blinking the truth. I 
shall need all my courage and all my resolution 
to meet it, and I shall meet it as manfully as I can. 
Yet the thought of meeting it thus has no inspira- 
tion in it. My only desire is that the frozen 
mind may melt at the touch of some genial ray, 
and that the buds may prick and unfold upon the 
shrunken bough. 

January 15, 1889. 

One of the miseries of my present situation is 
that it is all so intangible, and to the outsider so 
incomprehensible. There is no particular reason 
why I should write. I do not need the money ; 
I believe I do not desire fame. Let me try to be 
perfectly frank about this ; I do not at all desire 
the tangible results of fame, invitations to ban- 
quets, requests to deliver lectures, the acquaint- 
ance of notable people, laudatory reviews. I like 



94 The Altar Fire 

a quiet life ; I do not want 7nonstrari digito, as 
Horace says. I have had a taste of all of these 
things, and they do not amuse me, though I con- 
fess that I thought they would. I feel in this 
rather as Tennyson felt — that I dislike contemptu- 
ous criticism, and do not value praise — except the 
praise of a very few, the masters of the craft. 
And this one does not get, because the great men 
are mostly too much occupied in producing their 
own masterpieces to have the time or inclination 
to appraise others. Yet I am sure there is a vile 
fibre of ambition lurking in me, interwoven with 
my nature, which I cannot exactly disentangle. 
I very earnestly desire to do good and fine work, 
to write great books. If I genuinely and critic- 
ally approved of my own work, I could go on 
writing for the mere pleasure of it, in the face of 
universal neglect. But one may take it for 
granted that unless one is working on very novel 
and original lines — and I am not — the good qual- 
ities of one's work are not likely to escape atten- 
tion. The reason why Keats, and Shelley, and 
Tennyson, and Wordsworth were decried, was 
because their work was so unusual, so new, that 
conventional critics could not understand it. But 
I am using a perfectly familiar medium, and there 



When to Stop 95 

is a large and acute band of critics who are look- 
ing out for interesting work in the region of 
novels. Besides I have arrived at the point of 
having a vogue, so that anything I write would 
be treated with a certain respect. Where my 
ambition comes in is in the desire not to fall 
below my standard, I suppose that while I feel 
that I do not rate the judgment of the ordinary 
critic highly, I have an instinctive sense that my 
work is worthy of his admiration. The pain I 
feel is the sort of pain that an athlete feels who 
has established, say, a record in high -jumping, 
and finds that he can no longer hurl his stiffening 
legs and portly frame over the lath. Well, I have 
always held strongly that men ought to know 
when to stop. There is nothing more melancholy 
and contemptible than to see a successful man, 
who has brought out a brood of fine things, sitting 
meekly on addled eggs, or, still worse, squatting 
complacently among eggshells. It is like the story 
of the old tiresome Breton farmer whose wife was 
so annoyed by his ineffective fussiness, that she 
clapt him down to sit on a clutch of stone eggs 
for the rest of his life. How often have I thought 
how deplorable it was to see a man issuing a ser- 
ies of books, every one of which is feebler than its 



96 The Altar Fire 

predecessor, dishing up the old characters, the 
stale ideas, the used-up backgrounds. I have 
always hoped that some one would be kind and 
brave enough to tell me when I did that. But 
now that the end seems to have come to me 
naturally and spontaneously, I cannot accept my 
defeat. I am like the monkey of whom Frank 
Buckland wrote, who got into the kettle when 
the water was lukewarm, and found the outer air 
so cold whenever he attempted to leave it, that he 
was eventually very nearly boiled alive. The fact 
that my occupation is gone leaves life hollow to 
the core. Perhaps a wise man would content 
himself with composing some placid literary es- 
says, selecting some lesser figure in the world of 
letters, collecting gossip, and what are called 
"side-lights," about him, visiting his birthplace 
and early haunts, criticising his writings. That 
would be a harmless way of filling the time. But 
any one who has ever tried creative w^ork gets 
filled with a nauseating disgust for making books 
out of other people's writings, and constructing a 
kind of resurrection-pie out of the shreds. More- 
over I know nothing except literature ; I could 
only write a literary biograph}^ ; and it has 
always seemed to me a painful irony that men 



The Secret of Genius 97 

who have put into their writings what other 
people put into deeds and acts, should be the 
very people whose lives are sedulously written 
and rewritten, generation after generation. The 
instinct is natural enough. The vivid memories 
of statesmen and generals fade ; but as long as 
we have the fascinating and adorable reveries of 
great spirits, we are consumed with a desire to 
reconstruct their surroundings, that we may learn 
where they found their inspiration. A great poet, 
a great imaginative writer, so glorifies and irradi- 
ates the scene in which his mighty thoughts 
came to him, that we cannot help fancying that 
the secret lies in crag and hill and lake, rather 
than in the mind that gathered in the common 
joy. I have a passion for visiting the haunts of 
genius, but rather because they teach me that in- 
spiration lies everywhere, if we can but perceive 
it, than because I hope to detect where the par- 
ticular charm lay. And so I am driven back upon 
my own poor imagination. I say to m)'self, like 
Samson, " I will go out as at other times before, 
and shake myself, ' ' and then the end of the verse 
falls on me like a shadow — " and he wist not 
that the Lord was departed from him." 



98 The Altar Fire 

January i8, 1889. 

Nothing the matter, and yet everything the 
matter ! I plough on drearily enough, like a ves- 
sel forging slowly ahead against a strong, ugly, 
muddy stream. I seem to gain nothing, neither 
hope, patience, nor strength. My spirit revolted 
at first, but now I have lost the heart even for 
that : I simply bear my burden and wait. One 
tends to think, at such times, that no one has ever 
passed through a similar experience before ; and 
the isolation in which one moves is the hardest 
part of it all. Alone, and cut off even from God! 
If one felt that one was learning something, gain- 
ing power or courage, one could bear it cheerfully; 
but I feel rather as though all my vitality and 
moral strength was being pressed and drained 
from me. Yet I do not desire death and silence. 
I rather crave for life and light. 

No, I am not describing my state fairly. At 
times I have a sense that something, some power, 
some great influence, is trying to communicate 
with me, to deliver me some message. There are 
many hours when it is not so, when my nerveless 
brain seems losing its hold, slipping off into some 
dark confusion of sense. Yet again there are 
other moments, when sights and sounds have an 



Hypochondria 99 

overpowering and awful significance ; when the 
gleams of some tremendous secret seem flashed up- 
on my mind, at the sight of the mist-hung valley 
with its leafless woods and level water-meadows ; 
the flaring pomp of sunset hung low in the 
west over the bare ploughland or the wide- 
watered plain ; the wailing of the wind round the 
firelit house ; the faint twitter of awakening 
birds in the ivy ; the voice and smile of my child- 
ren ; the music breaking the silence of the house 
at evening. In a moment the sensation comes 
over me, that the sound or sight is sent not 
vaguely or lightly, but deliberately shown to me, 
for some great purpose, if I could but divine it ; 
an oracle of God, if I could but catch the words 
He utters in the darkness and the silence. 

February i, 1889. 
My dissatisfaction and depression begin to tell 
on me. I grow nervous and strained ; I am often 
sleepless, or my sleep is filled by vivid, horrible, 
intolerable dreams. I wake early in the clutch 
of fear. I wrestle at times with intolerable irri- 
tability ; social gatherings become unbearable ; 
I have all sorts of unmanning sensations, dizzi- 
nesses, tremors ; I have that dreadful sensa- 



too The Altar Fire 

tion that my consciousness of things and people 
around me, is shpping away from me, and that 
only by a strong effort can one retain one's hold 
upon it. I fall into a sort of dull reverie, and 
come back to the real world with a shock of sur- 
prise and almost horror. I went the other day to 
consult a great doctor about this. He reassured 
me ; he laughed at my fears ; he told me that it 
was a kind of neurasthenia, not fanciful but real ; 
that my brain had been overworked, and was 
taking its revenge ; that it was insufficiently 
nourished, and so forth. He knew who I was, 
and treated me with a respectful sympathy. I 
told him I had taken a prolonged holiday since 
my last book, and he replied that it had not been 
long enough. '* You must take it easy," he said. 
*' Don't do anything you don't like." I replied 
that the difficulty was to find anything I did 
like." He smiled at this, and said that I need 
not be afraid of breaking down ; he sounded me, 
and said that I was perfectly strong. " Indeed," 
he added, " you might go to a dozen doctors to be 
examined for an insurance policy, and you would 
be returned as absolutely robust." In the course 
of his investigations, he applied a test, quite cas- 
ually and as if he were hardly interested, the 



A Grim Shadow loi 

point of which he thought ( I suppose ) that I 
would not divine. Unfortunately I knew it, and 
I need only say that it was a test for something 
very bad indeed. That was rather a horrible 
moment, when a grim thing out of the shadow 
slipped forward for a moment, and looked me in 
the face. But it was over in an instant, and he 
went on to other things. He ended by saying : 

" Mr. , you are not as bad as you feel, or 

even as you think. Just take it quietly ; don't 
overdo it, but don't be bored. You say that you 
can't write to please yourself at present. Well, 
this experience is partly the cause and partly 
the result of your condition. You have used 
one particular part of 30 ur brain too much, and 
you must give it time to recover. My im- 
pression is that you will get better very gradu- 
ally, and I can only repeat that there is no sort of 
cause for anxiety. I can't help you more than 
that, and I am saying exactly what I feel. 

I looked at the worn face and kind eyes of the 
man whose whole life is spent in plumbing abysses 
of human suffering. What a terrible life, and j^et 
what a noble one ! He spoke as though he had 
no other case in the world to consider except my 
own ; yet when I went back to the waiting-room 



I02 The Altar Fire 

to get my hat, and looked round on the anxious- 
looking crowd of patients waiting there, each 
with a secret burden, I felt how heavy a load he 
must be carrying. 

There is a certain strength, after all, in having 
to live by rule ; and I have derived, I find, a cer- 
tain comfort in having to abstain from things that 
are likely to upset me, not because I wish it, but 
because some one else has ordered it. So I strug- 
gle on. The worst of nerves is that they are so 
whimsical ; one never knows when to expect their 
assaults ; the temptation is to think that they at- 
tack one when it is most inconvenient ; but this is 
not quite the case. They spare one when one ex- 
pects discomfort ; and again when one feels per- 
fectly secure, they leap upon one from their lair. 
The one secret of dealing with the malady is to 
think of it as a definite ailment, not to regard the 
attacks as the vagaries of a healthy mind, but as 
the symptoms of an unhealthly one. So much 
of these obsessions appears to be purely mental ; 
one finds oneself the prey of a perfectly cause- 
less depression, which involves everything in its 
shadow. As soon as one realises that this is not 
the result of the reflections that seem to cause it, 
but that one is, so to speak, merely looking at 



Nerves 103 

normal conditions through coloured glasses, it is 
a great help. But the perennial diflSculty is to 
know whether one needs repose and inaction, or 
whether one requires the stimulus of work and 
activit}^ Sometimes an unexpected call on one's 
faculties will encourage and gladden one ; some- 
times it will leave one unstrung and limp. A 
definite illness is always with one, more or less ; 
but in nervous ailments, one has interludes of 
perfect and even buoyant health, which delude 
one into hoping that the demon has gone out. 

It is a very elaborate form of torture anyhow ; 
and I confess that I find it difiicult to discern 
where its educative effect comes in, because it 
makes one shrink from effort, it makes one timid, 
indecisive, suspicious. It seems to encourage all 
the weaknesses and meannesses of the spirit ; and, 
worst of all, it centres one's thoughts upon one- 
self Perhaps it enlarges one's sympathy for all 
secret sufferers ; and it makes me grateful for the 
fact that I have had so little ill-health in my life. 
Yet I find myself, too, testing with some curiosity 
the breezy maxims of optimists. A cheerful 
writer says somewhere : " Will not the future be 
the better and the richer for memories of past 
pleasure? So surely must the sane man feel." 



I04 The Altar Fire 

Well, he must be very sane indeed. It takes a 
very burly philosopher to think of the future as 
being enriched by past gladness, when one seems 
to have forfeited it, and when one is by no means 
certain of getting it back. One feels bitterly 
how little one appreciated it at the time ; and to 
rejoice in reflecting how much past happiness 
stands to one's credit, is a very dispassionate atti- 
tude. I think Dante was nearer the truth when 
he said that "a sorrow's crown of sorrow was 
remembering happier things." 

February 3, 1889. 
To amuse oneself — that is the difficulty. 
Amusements are or ought to be the childish, irra- 
tional, savage things which a man goes on doing 
and practising, in virtue, I suppose, of the noble 
privilege of reason, far longer than any other 
animal — only yoic7ig animals amuse themselves ; a 
dog perhaps retains the faculty longer than most 
animals, but he only does it out of sympathy and 
companionship, to amuse his inscrutable owner, 
not to amuse himself. Amusements ought to be 
things which one wants to do, and which one is 
slightly ashamed of doing — enough ashamed, I 
mean, to give rather elaborate reasons for con- 



Amusements 105 

tinning them. If one shoots, for instance, one 
ought to say that it gets one out of doors, and 
that what one really enjoys is the country, and 
so forth. Personally I was never much amused 
by amusements, and gave them up as soon as I 
decently could. I regret it now. I wish we 
were all taught a handicraft as a regular part of 
education ! I used to sketch, and strum a piano 
once, but I cannot deliberately set to work on 
such things again. I gave them all up when I 
became a writer, really, I suppose, because I did 
not care for them, but nominally on the grounds 
of "resolute limitation," as Lord Acton said — 
with the idea that if you prune off the otiose 
boughs of a tree, you throw the strength of the 
sap into the boughs you retain. I see now that 
it was a mistake. But it is too late to begin again 
now. I was reading Kingsley's Life the other 
day. He used to overwork himself periodically — 
use up the grey matter at the base of his brain, 
as he described it ; but he had a hundred 
things that he wanted to do besides writing — 
fishing, entomologising, botanising. Browning 
liked modelling in clay, Wordsworth liked long 
walks, Byron had enough to do to keep himself 
thin, Tennyson had his pipe, Morris made tapes- 



io6 The Altar Fire 

try at a loom. Southey had no amusements, and 
he died of softening of the brain. The happy 
people are those who have work which they love, 
and a hobby of a totally different kind which 
they love even better. But I doubt whether one 
can make a hobby for oneself in middle age, 
unless one is a very resolute person indeed. 

February 7, 1889. 
The children went off yesterday to spend the 
inside of the day with a parson hard by, who has 
three children of his own about the same age. 
They did not want to go, of course, and it was 
particularly terrible to them, because neither I 
nor their mother was to go with them. But I 
was anxious they should go : there is nothing 
better for children than to visit occasionally at a 
strange house, and to go by themselves without 
an elder person to depend upon. It gives them 
independence and gets rid of shyness. They end 
by enjoying themselves immensely, and perhaps 
making some romantic friendship. As a child, I 
was almost tearfully insistent that I should not 
have to go on such visits ; but yet a few days of 
the sort stand out in my childhood with a vivid- 
ness and a distinctness, which show what an 



Despair 107 

effect they produced, and how they quickened 
one's perceptive and inventive faculties. 

When they were gone I went out with Maud. 
I was at my very worst, I fear ; full of heaviness 
and deeply disquieted ; desiring I knew well what 
— some quickening of emotion, some hopeful im- 
pulse — but utterly unable to attain it. We had 
a very sad talk. I tried to make it clear to her 
how desolate I felt, and to win some kind of for- 
giveness for my sterile and loveless mood. She 
tried to comfort me ; she said that it was only 
like passing through a tunnel ; she made it clear 
to me, by some unspoken communication, that I 
was dearer than ever to her in these da3's of 
sorrow ; but there was a shadow in her mind, the 
shadow that fell from the loneliness in which I 
moved, the sense that she could not share my 
misery with me. I tried to show her that the one 
thing one could not share was emptiness. If one's 
cup is full of interests, plans, happinesses, even 
tangible anxieties, it is easy and natural to make 
them known to one whom one loves best. But 
one cannot share the horror of the formless dark ; 
the vacuous and tortured mind. It is the dark 
absence of anything that is the source of my 
wretchedness. If there were pain, grief, mourn- 



io8 The Altar Fire 

ful energy of any kind, one could put it into 
words ; but how can one find expression for 
what is a total eclipse ? 

It was not, I said, that anything had come 
between her and me ; but I seemed to be remote, 
withdrawn, laid apart like some stiffening corpse 
in the tomb. She tried to reassure me, to show 
me that it was mainly physical, the overstrain of 
long and actively enjoyed work, and that all I 
needed was rest. She did not say one word of 
reproach, or anything to imply that I was un- 
manly and cowardly — indeed, she contrived, I 
know not how, to lead me to think that my state 
was in ordinary life hardly apparent. Once she 
asked pathetically if there was no way in which 
she could help. I had not the heart to say what 
was in my mind, that it would be better and 
easier for me if she ignored my unhappiness alto- 
gether ; and that sympathy and compassion only 
plunged me deeper into gloom, as showing me 
that it was evident that there was something 
amiss — but I said, " No, there is nothing ; and 
no one can help me, unless God kindles the light 
He has quenched. Be your own dear self as 
much as possible ; think and speak as little of 
me as you can," — and then I added, ''Dearest, 



The Conflict 109 

my love for you is here, as strong and pure as 
ever — don't doubt that — only I cannot find it or 
come near it — it is hidden from me somewhere — 
I am like a man wandering in dark fields, who 
sees the fire-lit window of his home ; he cannot 
feel the warmth, but he knows that it is there 
waiting for him. He cannot return till he has 
found that of which he is in search." 

"Could he not give up the search?" said 
Maud, smiling tearfully. " Ah, not 3^et," I said. 
"You do not know, Maud, what my work has 
been to me — no man can ever explain that to any 
woman, I think : for w^omen live in life, but man 
lives in work. Man does, woman is. There is 
the difference." 

We drew near the village. The red sun was 
sinking over the plain, a ball of fire; the mist 
w^as creeping up from the low-lying fields; the 
moon hung, a white crescent, high in the blue 
sky. We went to the little inn, where we had 
been before. We ordered tea — we were to return 
by train — and Maud being tired, I left her while 
I took a turn in the village, and explored the 
remains of an old manor-house, which I had seen 
often from the road. I was intolerably restless. 
I found a lane which led to the fields behind the 



no The Altar Fire 

manor. It was a beautiful scene. To the left of 
me ran the great plain brimmed with mist ; the 
manor, with its high gables and chimney-stacks, 
stood up over an orchard, surrounded by a high, 
ancient brick wall, with a gate between tall gate- 
posts surmounted by stone balls. The old pas- 
ture lay round the house, and there were mau}^ 
ancient elms and sycamores forming a small park, 
in the boughs of which the rooks, who were now 
streaming home from the fields, were clamorous. 
I found myself near a chain of old fish-ponds, 
with thorn -thickets all about them ; and here the 
old house stood up against a pure evening sky, 
rusty red below, melting into a pure green above. 
My heart went out in wonder at the thought of 
the unknown lives lived in this place, the past 
joys, the forgotten sorrows. What did it mean 
for me, the incredible and caressing beauty of the 
scene? Not only did it not comfort me, but it 
seemed to darken the gloom of my own unhappy 
mind. Suddenly, as with a surge of agony, my 
misery flowed in upon me. I clutched the rail 
where I stood, and bowed my head down in utter 
wretchedness. There came upon me, as with a 
sort of ghastly hopefulness, the temptation to leave 
it all, to put my case back into God's hands. Per- 



The Conflict m 

haps it was to this that I was moving ? There 
might be a new life waiting for me, but it could 
not well be as intolerable as this. Perhaps no- 
thing but silence and unconsciousness awaited 
me, a sleep unstirred by any dream. Even Maud, 
I thought, in her sorrow, would understand. How 
long I stood there I do not know, but the air 
darkened about me and the mist rose in long 
veils about the pasture with a deadly chill. But 
then there came back a sort of grim courage into 
my mind, that not so could it be ended. The 
thought of Maud and the children rose before 
me, and I knew I could not leave them, unless I 
were withdrawn from them. I must face it, I 
must fight it out ; though I could and did pray 
with all my might that God might take away my 
life: I thought with what an utter joj^ I should 
feel the pang, the faintness, of death creep over 
me there in the dim pasture ; but I knew in my 
heart that it was not to be; and soon I went 
slowly back through the thickening gloom. I 
found Maud awaiting me: and I know in that 
moment that some touch of the dark conflict I 
had been through had made itself felt in her 
mind ; and indeed I think she read something of 
it in my face, from the startled glance she turned 



112 The Altar Fire 

upon me. Perhaps it would have been better if 
in that quiet hour I could have told her the 
thought which had been in my mind ; but I could 
not do that; and indeed it seemed to me as 
though some unseen light had sprung up for me, 
shooting and broadening in the darkness. I ap- 
prehended that I was no longer to suffer, I was 
to fight. Hitherto I had yielded to my misery, 
but the time was come to row against the current, 
not to drift with it. 

It was dark when we left the little inn; the 
moon had brightened to a crescent of pale gold ; 
the last dim orange stain of sunset still slept 
above the mist. It seemed to me as though I 
had somehow touched the bottom. How could 
I tell? Perhaps the same horrible temptation 
would beset me, again and again, deepening into 
a despairing purpose; the fertile mind built up 
rapidly a dreadful vista of possibilities, terrible 
facts that might have to be faced. Even so the 
dark mood beckoned me again ; better to end it, 
said a hollow voice, better to let your dear ones 
suffer the worst, with a sorrow that will lessen 
year by year, than sink into a broken shadowed 
life of separation and restraint — but again it 
passed ; again a grim resolution came to my aid. 



Within the Forbidden Door 113 

Then, as we sped homewards in the speeding 
train, there came over me another thought. 
Here was I, who had lightly trafficked with 
human emotions, who had written with a ro- 
mantic glow of the dark things of life, despair, 
agony, thoughts of self-destruction, insane fears, 
here was I at last confronted with them. I could 
never dare, I felt, to speak of such things again; 
were such dark mysteries to be used to heighten 
the sense of security and joy, to give a trivial 
reader a thrill of pleasure, a sympathetic reader 
a thrill of luxurious emotion? No, there was 
nothing uplifting or romantic about them when 
they came ; they were dark as the grave, cold as 
the underlying clay. What a vile and loathsome 
profanation, deserving indeed of a grim punish- 
ment, to make a picturesque background out of 
such things ! At length I had had my bitter taste 
of grief, and drew in to my trembling spirit the 
shuddering chill of despair. I had stepped, like 
the light hearted maiden of the old story, within 
the forbidden door, and the ugly, the ghastly 
reality of the place had burst upon me, the hud- 
dled bodies, the basin filled with blood. One had 
read in books of men and women whose life had 
been suddenly curdled into slow miseries. One 



1 14 The Altar Fire 

had half blamed them in one's thought; one had 
felt that any experience, however dark and deep, 
must have its artistic value ; and one had thought 
that they should have emerged with new zest 
into life. I understood it now, how life could be 
frozen at its very source, how one could cry out 
with Job curses on the day that gave one birth, 
and how gladly one would turn one's face away 
from the world and all its cheerful noise, awaiting 
the last stroke of God. 

February 20, 1889. 

There is a story of a Cornish farmer who, re- 
turning home one dark and misty night, struck 
across the moorland, every yard of which he knew, 
in order to avoid a long tramp by road. In 
one place there were a number of disused mine- 
shafts ;— the railing which had once protected 
them had rotted away, and it had been no one's 
business to see that it was renewed — some few had 
been filled up, but many of them were hundreds 
of feet deep, and entirely unguarded. The farmer 
first missed the track, and after long w^andering 
found himself at last among the shafts. He sate 
down, knowing the extreme danger of his situa- 
tion, and resolved to wait till the morning ; but 



The Mine-Shaft 115 

it became so cold that he dared stay no longer, for 
fear of being frozen alive, and with infinite precau- 
tions he tried to make his wa^^ out of the danger- 
ous region, following the downward slope of the 
ground. In spite, however, of all his care, he found 
suddenly, on putting his foot down, that he was on 
the edge of a shaft, and that his foot was dangling 
in vacancy. He threw himself backwards but too 
late, and he slid down several feet, grasping at 
the grass and heather ; his foot fortunately struck 
against a large stone, which though precariously 
poised, arrested his fall ; and he hung there for 
some hours in mortal anguish, not daring to 
move, clinging to a tuft of heather, shouting at 
intervals, in the hope that, when he did not return 
home, a search-party might be sent out to look for 
him. At last he heard, to his intense relief, the 
sound of voices hailing him, and presently the 
gleam of lanterns shot through the mist. He ut- 
tered agonising cries, and the rescuers were soon 
at his side; when he found that he had been lying 
in a shaft which had been filled up, and that the 
firm ground was about a foot below him ; and 
that, in fact, if the stone that supported him had 
given wa5% he would have been spared a long 
period of almost intolerable horror. 



ii6 The Altar Fire 

It is a good parable of many of our disquieting 
fears and anxieties ; as I^ord Beaconsfield said, 
the greatest tragedies of his life had been things 
that never happened ; Carlyle truly and beauti- 
fully said that the reason why the past always ap- 
peared to be beautiful, in retrospect, was that the 
element of fear was absent from it. William Mor- 
ris said a trenchant thing on the same subject. 
He attended a Socialist meeting of a very hostile 
kind, which he anticipated with much depression. 
When some one asked him how the meeting had 
gone off he said, " Well, it was fully as damnable 
as I had expected — a thing which seldom hap- 
pens." A good test of the happiness of any one's 
life is to what extent he has had trials to bear 
which are unbearable even to recollect. I am my- 
self of a highly imaginative and anxious tempera- 
ment, and I have had many hours of depression at 
the thought of some unpleasant anticipation or 
disagreeable contingency, and I can honestly say 
that nothing has ever been so bad, when it act- 
ually occurred, as it had represented itself to me 
beforehand. There are a few incidents in my life, 
the recollection of which I deliberately' vShun ; but 
they have always been absolutely unexpected and 
unanticipated calamities. Yet even these have 



Anticipations 1 17 

never been as bad as I should have expected them 
to be. The strange thing is that experience never 
comes to one's aid, and that one never gets pa- 
tience or courage from the thought that the reality 
will be in all probability less distressing than the 
anticipation ; for the simple reason that the fertile 
imagination is always careful to add that this time 
the occasion will be intolerable, and that at all 
events it is better to be prepared for the worst that 
may happen. Moreover, one wastes force in an- 
ticipating perhaps half-a-dozen painful possibili- 
ties, when, after all, they are alternatives, and only 
one of them can happen. That is what makes my 
present situation so depressing, that I instinctively 
clothe it in its worst horrors, and look forward to 
a long and dreary life, in which my only occupa- 
tion will be an attempt to pass the weary hours. 
Faithless ? yes, of course it is faithless ! but the 
rational philosophy, which saj-s that it will all 
probably come right, does not penetrate to the 
deeper region in which the mind says to itself that 
there is no hope of amendment. 

Can one acquire, by an 3^ effort of the mind, this 
kind of patience? I do not think one can. The 
most that one can do is to behave as far as possi- 
ble like one playing a heavy part upon the stage, 



ii8 The Altar Fire 

to say with trembling lips that one has hope, when 
the sick mind beneath cries out that there is none. 
Perhaps one can practise a sort of indifference, 
and hope that advancing years may still the 
beating heart and numb the throbbing nerve. 
But I do not even desire to live life on these 
terms. The one great article of my creed has 
been that one ought not to lose zest and spirit, or 
acquiesce slothfully in comfortable and material 
conditions, but that life ought to be full of per- 
ception and emotion. Here again lies my mis- 
take ; that it has not been perception or emotion 
that I have practised, but the art of expressing 
what I have perceived and felt. Of course, I wish 
with all my heart and soul that it were otherwise ; 
but it seems that I have drifted so far into these 
tepid, sun-warmed shallows, the shallows of 
egoism and self-centred absorption, that there 
is no possibility of my finding my wa}^ again to 
the wholesome brine, to the fresh movement of 
the leaping wave. I am like one of those who 
lingered so long in the enchanted isle of Circe, 
listening luxuriously to the melting cadences of 
her magic song, that I have lost all hope of extri- 
cating myself from the spell. The old free days, 
when the heart beat light, and the breeze blew 



A Visit 119 

keen against my brow, have become only a mem- 
ory of delights, just enabling me to speak deftly 
and artfully of the strong joys which I have 
forfeited. 

February 24, 1889. 

I have been away for some days, paying a visit 
to an old friend, a bachelor clergyman living in 
the country. The only other occupant of the 
house, a comfortable vicarage, is his curate. I 
am better — ashamed almost to think how much 
better — for the change. It is partly the new 
place, the new surroundings, the new minds, no 
doubt. But it is also the change of atmosphere. 
At home I am surrounded by sympathy and 
compassion ; however unobstrusive they are, 1 
feel that they are there. I feel that trivial things, 
words, actions, looks are noted, commented upon, 
held to be significant. If I am silent, I must be 
depressed ; if I talk and smile, I am making an 
effort to overcome my depression. It sounds un- 
loving and ungracious to resent this : but I don't 
undervalue the care and tenderness that cause it ; 
at the same time it adds to the strain by imposing 
upon me a sort of vigilance, a constant effort to 
behave normally. It is infinitely and deeply 
touching to feel love all about me ; but in such a 



I20 The Altar Fire 

state of mind as mine, one is shy of emotion, one 
dreads it, one shuns it. I suppose it argues a 
want of simplicity, of perfect manfulness, to feel 
this ; but few or no women can instinctively feel 
the difference. In a real and deep affliction, one 
that could be frankly confessed, the more affec- 
tion and sympathy that one can have the better ; 
it is the one thing that sustains. But m}^ un- 
happiness is not a real thing altogether, not a 
frank thing ; the best medicine for it is to think 
little about it ; the only help one desires is the 
evidence that one does not need sympathy ; and 
sympathy only turns one's thoughts inwards, and 
makes one feel that one is forlorn and desolate, 
when the only hope is to feel neither. 

At Hapton it was just the reverse ; neither 
Musgrave nor the curate, Templeton, troubled 
his head about my fancies. I don't imagine 
that Musgrave noticed that anything was the 
matter with me. If I was silent, he merely 
thought I had nothing to say ; he took for granted 
I was in my normal state, and the result was that 
I temporarily recovered it. 

Then, too, the kind of talk I got was a relief. 
With women, the real talk is intinie talk ; the 
world of politics, books, men, facts, incidents, is 



Stimulating Companionship 121 

merely a setting ; and when they talk about 
them, it is merely to pass the time, as a man 
turns to a game. At Hapten, Musgrave chatted 
away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his 
new organ, his bishop, his work. I used to think 
him rather a proser ; how I blessed his prosing 
now ! I took long \valks with him ; he asked 
a few perfunctory questions about m}' books, but 
otherwise he was quite content to prattle on, like 
a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and 
he was more than content if I asked an occa- 
sional question or assented courteously. Then 
we had some good talks about the rural problems 
of education — he is a sensible and intelligent man 
enough— and some excellent arguments about 
the movement of religion, where I found him un- 
expectedly liberal-minded. He left me to do 
very much what I liked. I read in the mornings 
and before dinner ; and after dinner we smoked 
or even played a game of dummy whist. It is a 
pretty part of the country, and when he was 
occupied in the afternoon, I walked about b}^ my- 
self. From first to last not a single word fell 
from Musgrave to indicate that he thought me 
in any way different or suspected that I was 
not perfectly content, wdth the blessed result 



122 The Altar Fire 

that I immediately became exactly what he 
thought me. 

I got on no better with my writing ; my brain 
is as bare as a winter wood ; but I found that I 
did not rebel against that. Of course it does not 
reveal a very dignified temperament, that one 
should so take colour from one's surroundings. 
If I can be equable and good-humoured here, I 
ought to be able to be equable and good-hum- 
oured at home ; at the same time I am conscious 
of an intense longing to see Maud and the child- 
ren. Probably I should do better to absent my- 
self resolutely from home at stated intervals ; and 
I think it argued a fine degree of perception in 
Maud that she decided not to accompany me, 
though she was pressed to come. I am going 
home to-morrow, delighted at the thought, grate- 
ful to the good Musgrave, in a more normal 
frame of mind than I have been for months. 

February 28, 1889. 
One of the most depressing things about my 
present condition is that I feel, not only so use- 
less, but so prickly, so ugly, so unlovable. Even 
Maud's affection, stronger and more tender than 
ever, does not help me, because I feel that she 



Consolation 123 

cannot love me for what I am, but for what she 
remembers me as being, and hopes that I may be 
again. I know it is not so, and that she would 
love me whatever I did or became ; but I cannot 
realise that now. 

A few days ago an old friend came to see me ; 
and I was so futile, so fractious, so dull, so mel- 
ancholy with him that I wrote to him afterwards 
to apologise for my condition, telling him that I 
knew that I was not myself, and hoped he would 
forgive me for not making more of an effort. 
To-day I have had one of the manliest, ten- 
derest, most beautiful letters I have ever had in 
my life. He says, " Of course I saw thai yoic 
were not in your usual mood, but if you had pre- 
tended to be, if you had kept me at arm's length, if 
you had grimaced and made pretence, we should 
have been no nearer in spirit. I was proud arid 
grateful that you should so have trusted me, as to let 
me see ijito your heart and mind ; and you must be- 
lieve me whe7i I say that I never loved and honoured 
you more. I understood fully what a deep and in- 
supportable trial your present state of mind must 
be ; and I will be frank — why should I not be f — 
and say that I thought you we7'e bearing it bravely, 
and what is better still, simply and naturally. I 



1 24 The Altar Fire 

seemed to come closer to you in those hours than 
I have ever done before ^ and to realise better what 
you were. ' To make oneself beloved,' says a7i old 
ivriter, * is to make oneself useful to others ' — andyoit 
helped me perhaps niost^ when you kjiew it least 
yourself. I wont tell you not to brood upon or ex- 
aggerate your trouble— yo2i know that well enough 
yourself. But believe rne that such times are indeed 
times of growth and expa?ision^ even when ojie 
seems most beaten back upon oneself^ ?nost futile, 
7710 st unmanly. So take a little comfort, my old 
friend, and fare onwards hope f idly.'' 

That is a very beautiful and wise letter, and I 
cannot say how much it has meant to nie. It is 
t letter that forges an invisible chain, which is 
yet stronger than the strongest tie that circum- 
stance can forge ; it is a lantern for one's feet, and 
one treads a little more firmly in the dark path, 
where the hillside looms formless through the 
shade. 

March 3, 1889. 

Best of all the psalms I love the Hundred- and- 
nineteenth ; yet as a child what a weary thing I 
thought it. It was long, it was monotonous ; it 
dwelt with a tiresome persistency, I used to think, 



Psalm CXIX 125 

upon dull things — laws, commandments, statutes. 
Now that I am older, it seems to me one of the 
most human of all documents. It is tender, pen- 
sive, personal ; other psalms are that ; but Psalm 
cxix. is intinie and autobiographical. One is 
brought very close to a human spirit ; one hears 
his prayers, his sighs, the dropping of his tears. 
Then, too, in spite of its sadness, there is a deep 
hopefulness and faithfulness about it, a firm be- 
lief in the ultimate triumph of what is good and 
true, a certainty that what is pure and beauti- 
ful is worth holding on to, whatever may hap- 
pen ; a nearness to God, a quiet confidence in 
Him. It is all in a subdued and minor key, but 
swelling up at intervals into a chord of ravishing 
sweetness. 

There is never the least note of loudness, none 
of that terrible patriotism w^hich defaces many 
of the psalms, the patriotism which makes men 
believe that God is the friend of the chosen race, 
and the foe of all other races, the ugly self-suffic- 
iency that contemplates with delight, not the 
salvation and inclusion of the heathen, but their 
discomfiture and destruction. The worst side of 
the Puritan found delight in those cruel and mili- 
tant psalms, revelling in the thought that God 



126 The Altar Fire 

would rain upon the ungodly fire and brimstone, 
storm and tempest, and exulting in the blasting 
of the breath of His displeasure. Could anything 
be more alien to the spirit of Christ than all that ? 
But here, in this melancholy psalm, there breathes 
a spirit naturally Christian, loving peace and con- 
templation, very weary of the strife. 

I have said it is autobiographical ; but it must 
be remembered that it was a fruitful literary 
device in those early days, to cast one's own 
thought in the mould of some well-known 
character. In this psalm I have sometimes 
thought that the writer had Daniel in mind — 
the vSurroundings of the psalm suit the circum- 
stances of Daniel with singular exactness. But 
even so, it was the work of a man, I think, who 
had suffered the sorrows of which he wrote. 
I,et me try to disentangle what manner of 
man he was. 

He was young and humble ; he was rich, or had 
opportunities of becoming so ; he was an exile, or 
lived in an uncongenial society ; he was the mem- 
ber of a court where he was derided, disliked, 
slandered, plotted against, and even persecuted. 
We can clearly discern his own character. He 
was timid, and yet ambitious ; he was tempted to 



Psalm CXIX 127 

use deceit and hypocrisy, to acquiesce in the tone 
about him ; he was inclined to be covetous ; he 
had sinned, and had learnt something of holiness 
from his fall ; he was given to solitude and 
prayer. He w^as sensitive, and his sorrows had 
affected his health ; he was sleepless, and had lost 
the bloom of his j^outh. 

All this and more we can read of him ; but 
what is the saddest touch of all is the isolation in 
which he lived. There is not a word to show that 
he met w^ith any sympathy ; indeed the misunder- 
standing, whatever it was, that overshadowed 
him, had driven acquaintances, friends, and lov- 
ers away from him ; and 3^et his tender confidence 
in God never fails ; he feels that in his passionate 
worship of virtue and truth, his intense love of 
purity and justice, he has got a treasure which is 
more to him than riches or honour, or even than 
human love. He speaks as though this passion 
for holiness had been the very thing that had 
cost him so dear, and that exposed him to de- 
rision and dislike. Perhaps he had refused to 
fall in with some customary form of evil, and his 
resistance to temptation had led him to be re- 
garded as a precisian and a saint ? I have little 
doubt myself that this was so. He speaks as one 



128 The Altar Fire 

might speak who had been so smitten with the 
desire for purity and rightness of life, that he 
could no longer even seem to condone the op- 
posite. And yet he was evidently not one who 
dared to withstand and rebuke evil ; the most he 
could do was to abstain from it ; and the result 
was that he saw the careless and evil-minded 
people about him prosperous, happy, and light- 
hearted, while he was himself plunged by his 
own act in misunderstanding and solitude and 
tears. 

And then how strange to see this beautiful and 
delicate confession put into so narrow and con- 
strained a shape! It is the most artificial by far 
of all the psalms. The writer has chosen deliber- 
ately one of the most cramping and confining 
forms that could be devised. Each of the eight 
verses that form the separate stanzas begins with 
the same letter of the alphabet, and each of the 
letters is used in turn. Think of attempting to 
do the same in English— it could not be done at 
all. And then in every single verse, except in 
one, where the word has probably disappeared in 
translation, by a mistake, there is a mention of 
the law of God. Infinite pains must have gone to 
the slow building of this curious structure ; stone 



Psalm CXIX 129 

by stone must have been carved and lifted to its 
place. And yet the art is so great that I know 
no composition of the same length that has so 
perfect a unity of mood and atmosphere. There 
is never a false or alien note struck. It is never 
jubilant or contentious or assertive — and, best 
of all, it is wholly free from any touch of that 
complacency which is the shadow of virtue. The 
writer never takes anj^ credit to himself for his 
firm adherence to the truth ; he writes rather as 
one who has had a gift of immeasurable value 
entrusted to unworthy hands, who hardly dares 
to believe that it has been granted him, and who 
still speaks as though he might at any time prove 
unfaithful, as though his weakness might sudden- 
ly betray him, and who therefore has little tempta- 
tion to exult in the possession of anything which 
his own frail nature might at any moment forfeit. 
And thus, from its humility, its sense of weak- 
ness and weariness, its consciousness of sin and 
failure, combined with its deep apprehension of 
the stainless beauty of the moral law, this lyric 
has found its way to the hearts of all who find the 
world and temptation and fear too strong, all 
who through repeated failure have learned that 
they cannot even be true to what they so patheti- 
9 



130 The Altar Fire 

cally desire and admire ; who would be brave and 
vigorous if they could, but, as it is, can only 
hope to be just led step by step, helped over the 
immediate difficulty, past the dreaded moment ; 
whose heart often fails them, and who have little 
of the joy of God ; who can only trust that, if 
they go astray, the mercy of God will yet go out 
to seek them ; who cannot even hope to run in 
the way of God's beloved commandments, till He 
has set their heart at liberty. 

March 8, 1889. 

I went to see Darell, my old schoolfellow, a few 
days ago ; he wrote to say that he would much 
like to see me, but that he was ill and unable to 
leave home — could I possibly come to see him ? 

I have never seen very much of him since I left 
Cambridge; but there I was a good deal in his 
company— and we have kept up our friendship ever 
since, in the quiet way in which Englishmen do 
keep up their friendships, meeting perhaps two or 
three times in the year, exchanging letters occa- 
sionally. He was not a very intimate friend — 
indeed, he was not a man who formed intimacies ; 
but he was a congenial companion enough. He 
was a frankly ambitious man. He went to the 
Bar, where he has done well ; he married a wife 



A Shadow of Death 131 

with some money ; and I think his ultimate ambi- 
tion has been to enter Parliament. He told me, 
when I last saw him, that he had now, he thought, 
made money enough for this, and that he would 
probably stand at the next election. I have al- 
ways liked his wife, who is a sensible, good- 
natured woman, with social ambitions. They live 
in a good house in I^ondon, in a wealthy sort of 
way. I arrived to luncheon, and sate a little while 
with Mrs. Darell in the drawing-room. I became 
aware, while I sate with her, that there was a 
sense of anxiety in the air somehow, though she 
spoke cheerfully enough of her husband, saying 
that he had overworked himself, and had to lie 
up for a little. When he came into the room I 
understood. It was not that he was physically 
much altered — he is a strongly-buiit fellow, with 
a sanguine complexion and thick curly hair, now 
somewhat grizzled ; but I knew at the first sight 
of him that matters were serious. He was quiet 
and even cheerful in manner, but he had a look 
on his face that I had never seen before, the look 
of a man whose view of life had been suddenly 
altered, and who is preparing himself for the last 
long journey. I knew instinctively that he be- 
lieved himself a doomed man. He said very little 
about himself, and I did not ask him much ; he 



132 The Altar Fire 

talked about my books, and a good deal about old 
friends ; but all with a sense, I thought, of detach- 
ment, as though he were viewing everything over 
a sort of intangible fence. After luncheon, we 
adjourned to his study and smoked. He then 
said a few words about his illness, and added that 
it had altered his plans. '* I am told," he said, 
* * that I must take a good long holiday — rather a 
difficult job for a man who cares a great deal 
about his work and very little about anything 
else ; " he added a few medical details, from 
which I gathered the nature of his illness. Then 
he went on to talk of casual matters ; it seemed 
to interest him to discuss what had been happen- 
ing to our school and college friends ; but I knew, 
without being told, that he wished me to under- 
stand that he did not expect to resume his place 
in the world — and indeed I divined, by some dim 
communication of the spirit, that he thought my 
visit was probably a farewell. But he talked with 
unabated courage and interest, smiling where he 
would in old days have laughed, and speaking of 
our friends with more tenderness than was his 
wont. Only once did he half betray what was in 
his mind : * * It is rather strange, ' ' he said, * ' to 
be pushed aside like this, and to have to recon- 



Two Experiences 133 

sider one's theories. I did not expect to have to 
pull up — the path lay plain before me — and now 
it seems to me as if there were a good many things 
I had lost sight of. Well, one must take things 
as they come, and I don't think that if I had it 
all to do again I should do otherwise." He 
changed the subject rather hurriedly, and began 
to talk about my work. ** You are quite a great 
man now," he said with a smile ; " I hear your 
books talked about wherever I go — I used to 
wonder if you would have had the patience to do 
anything — you were hampered by having no need 
to earn your living ; but you have come out on 
the top. ' ' I told him something about my own 
late experiences and my difficulty in writing. 
He listened with undisguised interest. "What 
do you make of it ? " he said. " Well," I said, 
''you will think I am talking transcendentally, 
but I have felt often of late as if there were two 
strains in our life, two kinds of experience ; at 
one time we had to do our work with all our 
might, to get absorbed in it, to do what little we 
can to enrich the world ; and then at another 
time it is all knocked out of our hands, and we 
have to sit and meditate — to realise that we are 
here on sufferance, that what we can do matters 



134 The Altar Fire 

very little to any one — the same sort of feeling 
that I once had when old Hoskyns, in whose 
class I was, threw an essa}^ over which I had 
taken a lot of trouble, into his waste-paper basket 
before my eyes without even looking it over. I 
see now that I had got all the good I could out 
of the essay by writing it, and that the credit of 
it mattered very little ; but then I simpl}^ thought 
he was a very disagreeable and idle old fellow. ' ' 

"Yes," he said, smiling, "there is something 
in that ; but one wants the marks as well — I have 
always liked to be marked for my work. I am 
glad you told me that story, old man." 

We went on to talk of other things, and when 
I rose to go, he thanked me rather effusivel}' for 
my kindness in coming to see him. He told me 
that he was shortl}^ going abroad, and that if I 
could find time to write he would be grateful for 
a letter; "and when I am on my legs again," 
he said, with a smile, ' ' we will have another 
meeting." 

That was all that passed between us of actual 
speech. Yet how much more seems to have been 
implied than was said. I knew, as well as if he 
had told me in so many words, that he did not 
expect to see me again ; that he was in the valley 



Courage 135 

of the shadow, and wanted help and comfort. 
Yet he could not have described to me what was 
in his mind, and he would have resented it, I 
think, if I had betrayed any consciousness of my 
knowledge; and yet he knew that I knew, I am 
sure of that. 

The interview affected me deeply and poign- 
antly. The man's patience and courage are 
very great; but he has lived, frankly and la- 
boriousl}^ for perfectly definite things. He never 
had the least sense of what is technically called 
religion ; he was strong and temperate by nature, 
with a fine sense of honour ; loving work and the 
rewards of work, despising sentiment and emo- 
tion — indeed his respect for me, of which I was 
fully conscious, is the respect he feels for a senti- 
mental man who has made sentiment pay. It is 
very hard to see what part the prospect of suffer- 
ing and death is meant to play in the life of such 
a man. It must be, surely, that he has some- 
thing even more real than what he has held to be 
realities to learn from the sudden snapping off of 
life and activity. I find myself filled with an 
immense pity for him ; and yet if my faith were a 
little stronger and purer, I should congratulate 
rather than commiserate him. And yet the 



136 The Altar Fire 

thought of him in his bewilderment helps me 
too, for I see my own life as in a mirror. I have 
received a message of truth, the message that the 
accomplishment of our plans and cherished de- 
signs is not the best thing that can befall us. 
How easy to see that in the case of another, how 
hard to see it in our own case ! But it has helped 
me too to throw myself outside the morbid per- 
plexities in which I am involved; to hold out 
open hands to the gift of God, even though He 
seems to give me a stone for bread, a stinging 
serpent for wholesome provender, It has taught 
me to pray — not only for myself, but for all the 
poor souls who are in the grip of a sorrow that 
they cannot understand or bear. 

March 14, 1889. 
The question that haunts me, the problem I 
cannot disentangle, is what is or what ought our 
purpose to be ? What is our duty in life ? Ought 
we to discern a duty which lies apart from our 
own desires and inclinations ? The moralist says 
that it ought to be to help other people; but 
surely that is because the people, whom by some 
instinct we deem the highest, have had the irre- 
sistible desire to help others ? How many people 



Duty 137 

has one ever known who have taken up philan- 
thropy merely from a sense of rectitude ? The 
people who have done most to help the world 
along have been the people who have had an 
overwhelming natural tenderness, an overflowing 
love for helpless, weak, and unhappy people. 
That is a thing which cannot be simulated. One 
knows quite well, to put the matter simply, the 
extent of one' s own limitations. There are courses 
of action which seem natural and easy; others 
which seem hard, but just possible; others again 
which are frankly impossible. However noble a 
life, for instance, I thought the life of a missionary 
or of a doctor to be, I could not under any cir- 
cumstances adopt the role of either. There are 
certain things which I might force myself to do 
which I do not do, and which I practically know 
I shall not do. And the number of people is 
very small who, when circumstances suggest one 
course, resolutely carry out another. The artistic 
life is a very hard one to analyse, because at the 
outset it seems so frankly selfish a life. One does 
what one most desires to do, one develops one's 
own nature, its faculties and powers. If one is 
successful, the most one can claim is that one has 
perhaps added a little to the sum of happiness, of 



138 The Altar Fire 

innocent enjoyment, that one has perhaps in- 
creased or fed in a few people the perception of 
beauty. Of course the difficulty is increased by 
the conventional belief that any career is justified 
by success in that career. And as long as a man 
attains a certain measure of renown we do not 
question very much the nature of his aims. 

Then, again, if we put that all aside, and look 
upon life as a thing that is given us to teach us 
something, it is easy to think that it does not 
matter very much what we do ; we take the line 
of least resistance, and think that we shall learn 
our lesson somehow. 

It is difficult to believe that our one object 
ought to be to thwart all our own desires and 
impulses, to abstain from doing what we desire 
to do, and to force ourselves continually to do 
what we have no impulse to do. That is a philo- 
sophical and stoical business, and would end at 
best in a patient and courteous dreariness of spirit. 

Neither does it seem a right solution to say : 
' ' I will parcel out my energies — so much will 
I give to myself, so much to others." It ought to 
be a larger, more generous business than that ; 
yet the people who give themselves most freely 
away too often end by having very little to give ; 



Desired Harmony 139 

instead of having a store of ripe and wise reflec- 
tion, they have generally little more than an 
official smile, a kindly tolerance, a voluble stream 
of commonplaces. 

And then, too, it is hard to see, to speak 
candidly, what God is doing in the matter. One 
sees useful careers cut ruthlessly short, generous 
qualities nullified by bad health or minute faults, 
promise unfulfilled, men and women bound in 
narrow, petty, uncongenial spheres, the whole 
matter in a sad disorder. One sees one man's 
influence spoilt by over-confidence, by too strong 
a sense of his own significance, and another man 
made ineffective by diffidence and self- distrust. 
The best things of life, the most gracious oppor- 
tunities, such as love and marriage, cannot be 
entered upon from a sense of duty, but only from 
an overpowering and instinctive impulse. 

Is it not possible to arrive at some tranquil 
harmony of life, some self-evolution, which should 
at the same time be ardent and generous ? In my 
own sad unrest of spirit, I seem to be alike incap- 
able of working for the sake of others and work- 
ing to please myself Perhaps that is but the 
symptom of a moral disease, a malady of the 
soul. Yet if that is so, and if one once feels that 



HO The Altar Fire 

disease and suffering is not a part of the great and 
gracious purpose of God— if it is but a failure in 
His design — the struggle is hopeless. One sees 
all around one men and women troubled by no 
misgivings, with no certain aim, just doing what- 
ever the tide of life impels them to do. My 
neighbour here is a man who for years has gone 
up to town every day to his oflSce. He is perfectly 
contented, absolutely happy. He has made more 
money than he will ever need or spend, and he 
will leave his children a considerable fortune. 
He is kind, respectable, upright ; he is considered 
a thoroughly enviable man, and indeed, if pro- 
sperity and contentment are the sign and seal of 
God's approbation, such a man is the highest 
work of God, and has every reason to be an opti- 
mist. He would think my questionings morbid 
and my desires moonshine. He is not necessarily 
right any more than I ; but his theory of life 
works out a good deal better for him than mine 
for me. 

Well, we drift, we drift ! Sometimes the sun 
shines bright on the wave, and the wheeling 
birds dip and hover, and our heart is full of song. 
But sometimes we plunge on rising billows, with 
the wind wailing, and the rain pricking the sur- 



The Carlyles 141 

face with needle-points ; we are weary and un- 
comforted ; and we do not know why we suffer 
or wh}^ we are glad. Sometimes I have a far-oflf 
hope that I shall know, that I shall understand 
and be satisfied ; but sometimes, alas, I fear that 
my soul will flare out upon the darkness, and 
know no more either of weal or woe. 

March 20, 1889. 
I am reading a great deal now ; but I find that 
I turn naturally to books of a sad mtimite — 
books in which are revealed the sorrowful cares 
and troubles of sensitive people. Partly, I sup- 
pose, it is to get the sense of comfort which 
comes from feeling that others have suffered too ; 
but partly to find, if I can, some medicine for 
my soul, in learning how others struggled out 
of the mire. Thus I have been reading Froude's 
Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters over again, 
and they have moved me strangely and deeply. 
Perhaps it is mostly that I have felt, in these 
dark months, drawn to the society of two brave 
people — she was brave in her silences, he in 
the way in which he stuck doggedly to his work 
— who each suffered so horribly, so imaginatively, 
so inexplicably, and, alas, it would seem, so un- 



142 The Altar Fire 

necessarily ! Of course Carlyle indulged his 
moods, while Mrs. Carlyle fought against hers ; 
moreover, he had the instinct for translating 
thoughts, instantaneously and volubly, into 
vehement picturesque speech. How he could 
bite in a picture, an ugly, ill-tempered one 
enough very often, as when he called Coleridge a 
' ' weltering ' ' man ! Many of his sketches are 
mere Gillray caricatures of people, seen through 
bile unutterable, exasperated by nervous irrita- 
bility. And Mrs. Carlyle had a mordant wit 
enough. But still both of them had an fond a 
deep need of love, and a power of lavishing love. 
It comes out in the old man's whimsical notes 
and prefaces ; and indeed it is true to say that if 
a person once actually penetrated into Carlyle' s 
inner circle, he found himself loved hungrily 
and devotedly, and never forgotten or cast out. 
And as to Mrs. Carlyle, I suppose it was impos- 
sible to be near her and not to love her ! This 
comes out in glimpses in her sad pathological let- 
ters. There is a scene she describes, how she 
returned home after some long and serious bout 
of illness, when her cook and housemaid rushed 
into the street, kissed her, and wept on her 
neck ; while two of her men friends, Mr. Cooke 



Fiction and Fact 143 

and lyord Houghton, who called in the course of 
the evening, to her surprise and obvious pleasure, 
did the very same. The result on myself, after, 
reading the books, is to feel myself one of the 
circle, to want to do something for them, to wring 
the necks of the cocks who disturbed Carlyle's 
sleep ; and sometimes, alas ! to rap the old man's 
fingers for his bUnd inconsiderateness and selfish- 
ness. I came the other day upon a passage in 
a former book of my own, where I said some- 
thing sneering and derisive about the pair, and I 
felt deep shame and contrition for having written 
it — and, more than that, I felt a sort of disgust 
for the fact that I have spent so much time in 
writing fiction. Books like the Life of Carlyle 
and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters take the wind out of 
one's imaginative faculties altogether, because 
one is confronted with the real stuff of life in 
them. I/ife, that hard, stubborn, inconclusive, 
inconsistent, terrible thing ! It is, of course, that 
very hardness and inconclusiveness that makes 
one turn to fiction. In fiction, one can round off 
the corners, repair mistakes, comfort, idealise, 
smooth things down, make error and weakness 
bear good fruit, choose, develop as one pleases. 
Not so with life, where things go from bad to 



144 The Altar Fire 

worse, misunderstandings grow and multiply, 
suffering does not purge, sorrow does not uplift. 
That is the worst of fiction, that it deludes one 
into thinking that one can deal gently with life, 
finish off the picture, arrange things on one's own 
little principles ; and then, as in my own case, 
life brings one up against some monstrous, 
grievous, intolerable fact, that one can neither 
look round or over, and the scales fall from one's 
eyes. With what courage, tranquillity, or joy is 
one to meet a thoroughly disagreeable situation ? 
The more one leans on the hope that it may 
amend, the weaker one grows ; the thing to 
realise is that it is bad, that it is inevitable, 
that it has arrived, and to let the terror and 
misery do their worst, soak into the vSoul and 
not run off it. Only then can one hope to be 
different ; only so can one climb the weary lad- 
der of patience and faith. 

March 28, 1889. 
I,ow-hung ragged grey skies, heaven smeared 
with watery vapours fleeting, broken and mourn- 
ful, from the west — these above me, as I stand by 
the old lichened gate of the high wind-swept field 
at the top of the wold. In front a stretch of 



A Spring Evening 145 

rough common, the dark-brown heather, the 
young gorse, bhiish- green, the rusty red of 
soaked bracken, the pale ochre-coloured grass, 
all blent into a rich tint that pleases the eye 
with its wild freshness. To the left, the wide 
flat level of the plain, with low hills rising on 
its verge ; to the right, a pale pool of water at the 
bottom of a secret valley, reflecting the leafless 
bushes that fringe it, catches the sunset gleam 
that rises in the west ; and then range after range 
of wolds, with pale-green pastures, dark copses, 
fawn-coloured ploughland, here and there an 
emerald patch of young wheat. The air is fresh, 
soft, and fragrant, laden with rain ; the earth 
smells sweet ; and the wild woodland scent comes 
blowing to me out of the heart of the spinney. In 
front of me glimmer the rough wheel-tracks in a 
grassy road that lead out on to the heath, and two 
obscure figures move slowly nearer among the 
tufted gorse. They seem to me, those two figures, 
charged with a grave significance, as though 
they came to bear me tidings, messengers bidden 
to seek and find me, like the men who visited 
Abraham at the close of the day. 

As I linger, the day grows darker, the colour 
fading from leaf and blade ; bright points of light 



146 The Altar Fire 

flash out among the dark ridges from secluded 
farms, where the evening lamp is lit. 

Sometimes on days like this, when the moisture 
hangs upon the hedges, when the streams talk 
hoarsely to themselves in grassy channels, when 
the road is full of pools, one is weary, unstrung 
and dissatisfied, faint of purpose, tired of labour, 
desiring neither activity nor rest ; the soul sits 
brooding, like the black crows that I see in the 
leafless wood beneath me, perched silent and 
draggled on the tree-tops, just waiting for the sun 
and the dry keen airs to return ; but to-day it is 
not so ; I am full of a quiet hope, an acquiescent 
tranquillity. My heart talks gently to itself, as to 
an unseen friend, telling its designs, its wishes, its 
activities. I think of those I hold dear, all the 
world over ; I am glad that they are alive, and 
believe that they think of me. All the air seems 
full of messages, thoughts, and confidences, and 
welcomes passing to and fro, binding souls to 
each other, and all to God. There seems to be 
nothing that one needs to do to-daj^ except to live 
one's daily life ; to be kind and joyful. To-day 
the road of pilgrimage lies very straight and clear 
between its fences, in an open ground, with neither 
valley nor hill, no by-path, no turning. One can 



The Pilgrimage 147 

even see the gables and chimneys of some grave 
house of welcome, " a roof for when the dark 
hours begin," full of pious company and smiling 
maidens. And not, it seems, a false security ; 
one is not elated, confident, .strong ; one knows 
one's weakness ; but I think that the Lord of the 
land has lately passed by with a smile, and given 
command that the pilgrims shall have a space of 
quiet. These birds, these branching trees, have 
not yet lost the joy of His passing. There, along 
the grassy tracks. His patient footsteps went, how 
short a time ago ! One does not hope that all the 
journey will be easy and untroubled ; there will 
be fresh burdens to be borne, dim valleys full of 
sighs to creep through, dark waters to wade 
across ; these feet will stumble and bleed ; these 
knees will be weary before the end ; but to-day 
there is no doubt about the pilgrimage, no ques- 
tion of the far-off goal. The world is sad, perhaps, 
but sweet ; sad as the homeless clouds that drift 
endlessly across the sky from marge to marge ; 
sweet as the note of the hidden bird, that rises 
from moment to moment from the copse beside 
me, again and yet again, telling of a little heart 
that is content to wait, and not ill-pleased to be 
alone with its own soft thoughts. 



148 The Altar Fire 

April 4, 1889. 

Down in the valley wliicli runs below the house 
is a mill. I passed it to-day at dusk, and I 
thought I had never seen so characteristically 
English a scene. The wheel was silent, and the 
big boarded walls, dusted with flour, loomed up 
solemnly in the evening light. The full leat 
dashed merrily through the vsluice, making holi- 
day, like a child released from school. Behind 
was the stack-yard, for it is a farm as well as a 
mill ; and in the byre I heard the grunting of com- 
fortable pigs, and the soft pulling of the hay from 
the big racks by the bullocks. The fowls were 
going to roost, fluttering up every now and then 
into the big elder-bushes ; while high above, in 
the apple-trees, I saw great turkeys settled pre- 
cariously for the night. The orchard was silent, 
except for the murmur of the stream that bounds 
it. In the mill-house itself lights gleamed in the 
windows, and I saw a pleasant family-party 
gathered at their evening meal. The whole scene 
with its background of sloping meadows and bud- 
ding woods so tranquil and contented — a scene 
which William Alorris would have loved — for 
there is a pleasant grace of antiquity about the old 
house, a sense of homel}^ and solid life, and of all 



The Miller 149 

the family associations that have gone to the mak- 
ing of it, generation after generation leaving iis 
mark in the little alterations and additions that 
have met a need, or even satisfied a pleasant fancy. 
The miller is an elderly man now, fond of work, 
prosperous, good-humoured. His son lives with 
him, and the house is full of grandchildren. I do 
not say that it puzzles me to divine what is the 
miller's view of life, because I think I know it. 
It is to make money honestly, to bring up his 
grandchildren virtuously and comfortably, to en- 
joy his daily work and his evening leisure. He is 
never idle, never preoccupied. He enjoys getting 
the mill started, seeing the flour stream into the 
sacks, he enjoys going to market, he enjoys going 
prosperously to church on Sundays, he enjoys his 
paper and his pipe. He has no exalted ideas, and 
he could not put a single emotion into words, but 
he is thoroughly honest, upright, manly, kind, 
sensible. A perfect life in many ways ; and yet 
it is inconceivable to me that a man should live 
thus, without an aim, without a hope, without an 
object. He would think my own life even more 
inconceivable — that a man could deliberately sit 
down day after day to construct a story about im- 
aginary people ; and such respect as he feels for 



I50 The Altar Fire 

me, is mainly due to the fact that my writings 
bring me in a larger income than he could ever 
make from his mill. But of course he is a man 
who is normally healthy, and such men as he are 
the props of rural life. He is a good master, he 
sees that his men do their work, and are well 
housed. He is not generous exactly, but he is 
neighbourly. The question is whether such as he 
is the proper type of humanity. He represents 
the simple virtues at their high- water mark. He 
is entirely contented, and his desires are perfectly 
proportioned to their surroundings. He seems in- 
deed to be exactly what the human creature ought 
to be. And yet his very virtues, his sense of jus- 
tice and honesty, his sensible kindliness, are the 
outcome of civilisation, and bear the stamp, in re- 
ality, of the dreams of saints and sages and ideal- 
ists—the men who felt that things could be better, 
and who were made miserable by the imperfec- 
tions of the world. I cannot help wondering, in 
a whimsical moment, what would have been the 
miller's thoughts of Christ, if he had been con- 
fronted with Him in the flesh . He would have 
thought of Him rather contemptuously, I think, 
as a bewildering, unpractical, emotional man. 
The miller would not have felt the appeal of un- 



My Work 151 

selfishness and unworldliness, because his ideal of 
life is tranquil prosperity. He would have merely 
wondered why people could not hold their tongues 
and mind their business : and yet he is a model 
citizen, and would be deeply annoyed if he were 
told he was not a sincere Christian. He accepts 
doctrinal statements as he would accept mathemati- 
cal formulae, and he takes exactly as much of the 
Christian doctrine as suits him. Now when I 
compare myself with the miller, I feel that, as far 
as human usefulness goes, I am far lower in the 
scale. I am, when all is Said and done, a drone 
in the hive, eating the honey I did not make. I do 
not take my share in the necessary labour of the 
world, I do not regulate a little community of la- 
bourers with uprightness and kindness, as he does. 
But still I suppose that my more sensitive organi- 
sation has a meaning in the scale of things. I 
can not have been made and developed as I am, 
outside of the purpose of God. And yet my work 
in the world is not that of the passionate idealist, 
that kindles men with the hope of bettering 
and amending the world. What is it that my 
work does ? It fills a vacant hour for leisurely 
people, it gives agreeable distraction, it furnishes 
some pleasant dreams. The most that I can say 



152 The Altar Fire 

is that I have a wife whom I desire to make 
happy, and children whom I desire to bring up 
innocently, purely, vigorously. 

Must one's hopes and beliefs be thus tentative 
and provisional? Must one walk through life, 
never fathoming the secret ? I have myself abun- 
dance of material comfort, health, leisure. I know 
that for one like myself, there are hundreds less 
fortunate. Yet happiness in this world depends 
very little upon circumstances ; it depends far 
more upon a certain mixture of selfishness, tran- 
quillity, temperance, bodily vigour, and unimagi- 
nativeness. To be happy, one must be good- 
humouredly indifferent to the sufferings of others, 
and indisposed to forecast the possibilities of dis- 
aster. The sadness which must shadow the path 
of such as myself is the sadness which comes of 
the power to see clearly the imperfections of the 
world, coupled with the inability to see through it, 
to discern the purpose of it all. One comforts 
oneself by the dim hope that the desire will be 
satisfied and the dream fulfilled ; but has one any 
certainty of that ? The temptation is to acquiesce 
in a sort of gentle cynicism, to take what one can 
get, to avoid as far as possible all deep attach- 
ments, all profound hopes, to steel oneself in in- 



Rousseau 153 

difference. That is what such men as my miller 
do instinctively ; meanwhile one tries to believe 
that the melancholy that comes to such as Ham- 
let, the sadness of finding the world unintelligible, 
and painful, and full of shadows, is a noble melan- 
choly, a superior sort of madness. Yet one is not 
content to bear, to suffer, to wait ; one clutches 
desperately at light and warmth and joy, and 
alas ! in joy and sorrow alike, one is ever and in- 
supportably alone. 

April ^, 1889. 

I have been reading Rousseau lately, and find 
him a very incomprehensible figure. The Con- 
fessions, it must be said, is a dingy and sordid 
book. I cannot quite penetrate the motive which 
induced him to write it. It cannot have been 
pure vanity, because he does not spare himself; 
he might have made himself out a far more 
romantic and attractive character, if he had sup- 
pressed the shadows and heightened the lights. I 
am inclined to think that it was partly vanity and 
partly honesty. Vanity was the motive force, and 
honesty the accompanying mood. I do not sup- 
pose there is any document so transparently true 
in existence, and we ought to be thankful for that. 



1 54 The Altar Fire 

It is customary to say that Rousseau had the soul 
of a lacquey, by which I suppose is meant that he 
had a gross and vulgar nature, a thievish taste for 
low pleasures, and an ill-bred absence of con- 
sideration for others. He had all these qualities 
certainly, but he had a great deal more. He was 
upright and disinterested. He had a noble dis- 
regard of material advantages; he had an enthu- 
siasm for virtue, a passionate love of humanity, a 
deep faith in God. He was not an intellectual 
man nor a philosopher ; and yet what a ridiculous 
criticism is that which is generally made upon 
him, that his reasoning is bad, his knowledge 
scanty, and that people had better read Hobbes! 
The very reason which made Rousseau so tre- 
mendous an influence was that his point of view 
was poetical rather than philosophical ; he was 
not too far removed from the souls to which 
he prophesied. What they needed was inspira- 
tion, emotion, and sentimental dogma ; these he 
could give, and so he saved Europe from the 
philosophers and the cynics. Of course it is a 
deplorable life, tormented by strong animal passion, 
ill-health, insanity ; but one tends to forget the 
prevalent coarseness of social tone at that date, 
not because Rousseau made any secret of it, but 



Rousseau 155 

because none of his contemporaries dared to be 
so frank. If Rousseau had struck out a dozen 
episodes from the Confessio7is the result would 
have been a highly poetical, reflective, charming 
book. I can easily conceive that it might have a 
very bad effect upon an ingenuous mind, because 
it might be argued from what he says that moral 
lapses do not very much matter, and that emotional 
experience is worth the price of some animalism. 
Still more perniciously it might induce one to 
believe that a man may have a deep sense of reli- 
gion side by side with an unbridled sensuality, 
and that one whose life is morally infamous may 
yet be able to quicken the moral temperature of 
great nations. 

Some of the critics of Rousseau speak as though 
a man whose moral code was so loose, and whose 
practice was so libidinous, ought almost to have 
held his tongue on matters of high moral import. 
But this is a very false line of argument. A man 
may see a truth clearly, even if he cannot practise 
it ; and an affirmation of a passionate belief in 
virtue is emphasised and accentuated when it 
comes from the lips of one who might be tempted 
rather to excuse his faults by preaching the irre- 
sistible character of evil. 



156 The Altar Fire 

To any one who reads wisely, and not in a 
censorious and Pharisaical spirit, this sordid record 
which is yet interspersed with things so fragrant 
and beautiful, may have a sobering and uplifting 
effect. One sees a man hampered by ill-health, by 
a temperament childishly greedy of momentary 
pleasure, by irritability, suspicion, vanity, and 
luxuriousness, again and again expressing a deep 
belief in unselfish emotion, a passionate desire to 
help struggling humanity onward, a childlike 
confidence in the goodness and tenderness of the 
Father of all. Disgust and admiration struggle 
strangely together. One cannot sympathise and 
yet one dare not condemn. One feels a horrible 
suspicion that there are dark and slimy corners, 
vile secrets, ugly memories, in the minds of hund- 
reds of seemingly respectable people; the book 
brings one face to face with the mystery of evil; 
and yet through the gloom there steals a silvery 
radiance, a far-off hope, an infinite compassion for 
all weakness and imperfection. One can hardly 
love Rousseau, though one does not wonder that 
there were many found to do so; and instead of 
judging him, one cries out with horror at the slime 
of the pit where he lay bound. 



A Delusion 157 

April T4, 1889. 
A delusion of which we must beware is the 
delusion that we can have a precise and accurate 
knowledge of spiritual things. This is a delusion 
into which the exponents of settled religions are 
apt to fall. The Roman Catholic, with his belief 
in the infallible Church, as the interpreter of 
God's spirit, which is nothing more than a belief 
in the inspiration of the majority, or even a belief 
in the inspiration of a bureaucracy, is the prey 
of this delusion. The Protestant, too, with his 
legal creed, built up of texts and precedents, in 
which the argumentative dicta of Apostles and 
EvangeHsts are as weight}^ and important as the 
words of the Saviour Himself, fall under this 
delusion. I read the other day a passage from 
a printed sermon of an orthodox type, an acrid 
outcry against lyiberalism in religion, which may 
illustrate what I mean. 

"To St. Paul and St. John," said the preacher, 
" the natural or carnal man is hopelessly remote 
from God ; the same lyord who came to make 
possible for man this intimate communion with 
God is careful to make it clear that this com- 
munion is only possible to redeemed, regenerate 
man ; prior to new birth into the Kingdom of 



158 The Altar Fire 

God, far from being a son of God, man is, ac- 
cording to the lyord Himself, a child of the devil, 
however potentially capable of being translated 
from death into life." 

Such teaching is so horrible and abominable 
that it is hard to find words to express one's 
sense of its shamefulness. To attribute it to the 
Christ, who came to seek and save what is lost, 
is an act of traitorous wickedness. If Christ had 
made it His business to thunder into the ears of 
the outcasts, whom He preferred to the Scribes 
and Pharisees this appalling message, where 
would His teaching be ? What message of hope 
would it hold for the soul? Such a view of 
Christianity as this insults alike the soul and the 
mind and the heart ; it deliberately insults God ; 
the message of Christ to the vilest human spirit 
is that it is indeed, in spite of all its corruption, 
its falls, its shame, in very truth God's own 
child ; it calls upon the sinner to recognise it, it 
takes for granted that he feels it. The people 
whom Christ denounced with indignation so 
fiery, so blasting, that it even seems inconsistent 
with His perfect gentleness, were the people who 
thus professed to know and interpret the mind of 
God, who bade the sinner believe that He was a 



A Perverted Faith 159 

merciless judge, extreme to mark what is done 
amiss, when the one secret was that He was the 
tenderest and most loving of Fathers. But accord- 
ing to this preacher's terrible doctrine God pours 
into the world a stream of millions of human be- 
ings, all children of the devil, with instincts of a 
corrupt kind, hampered by dreadful inheritances, 
doomed, from their helpless and reluctant birth, 
to be sinful here and lost hereafter, and then 
prescribes to them a hard and difficult path, be- 
set by clamorous guides, pointing in a hundred 
different directions, bidding them find the intri- 
cate way to His Heart, or perish. The truth is 
the precise opposite. The divine voice says to 
every man : ** Hampered and sore hindered as 
you are, you are yet My dearly beloved son and 
child ; only turn to Me, only open your heart to 
Me, only struggle, however faintly, to be what 
you can desire to be, and I will guide and lead 
you to Myself; all that is needed is that your 
heart should be on My side in the battle. Even 
your sins matter little, provided that you can say 
sincerel}^ ' If it were mine to choose and ordain, 
I would never willingly do evil again.' I know 
better even than 3^ou yourself know, your diffi- 
culties, your temptations, your weaknesses ; the 



i6o The Altar Fire 

sorrow they bring upon you is no dreary and 
vindictive punishment, it is the loving correction 
of My hand, and will bring you into peace j^et, if 
only you will trust Me, and not despair." 

The world is full of dreadful things, pains and 
sorrow and miseries, but the worst of all are the 
dreary wretchednesses of our own devising. The 
old detestable doctrine of Hell, the idea that the 
stubborn and perverse spirit can defy God, and 
make its black choice, is simply an attempt to 
glorify the strength of the human spirit and to 
belittle the lyove of God. It denies the truth that 
God, if he chose, could show the darkest soul the 
beauty of holiness in so constraining a way that 
the frail nature must yield to the appeal. To 
deny this, is to deny the omnipotence of the 
Creator. No man would deliberately reject peace 
and joy, if he could see how to find them, in 
favour of feverish evil and ceaseless suffering. If 
we believe that God is perfect love, it is incon- 
ceivable that He should make a creature capable 
of defying His utmost tenderness, unless He had 
said to Himself, " I will make a poor wretch who 
shall defy Me, and he shall suffer endlessly and 
mercilessly in consequence." The truth is that 
God's Omnipotence is limited by His Omnipo- 



The Mystery of the Mysteries i6i 

tence ; He could not, for instance, abolish Him- 
self, nor create a power that should be greater 
than He. But if He indeed can give to evil such 
vitality that it can defy Him for ever, then He is 
creating a power that is stronger than Himself. 

While the mystery of evil is unexplained, we 
must all be content to know that we do not 
know ; for the thing is insoluble by human 
thought. If God be all-pervading, all-in-all, it is 
impossible to conceive anything coming into being 
alien to Himself, within Himself If He created 
spirits able to choose evil, He must have created 
the evil for them to choose, for a man could not 
choose what did not exist ; if a man can defy 
God, God must have given him the thought of 
defiance, for no thought can enter the mind of 
man not permitted by God. 

With this mystery unsolved, we cannot pretend 
to any knowledge of spiritual things ; all that 
we can do is to recognise that the principle of 
lyove is stronger than the principle of evil, 
and cling so far as we can cling to the former. 
But to set ourselves up to guide and direct other 
men, as the preacher did whose words I have 
quoted, is to set oneself in the place of God, and 
is a detestable tyranny. Only by our innate 



1 62 The Altar Fire 

sense of Justice and I^ove can we apprehend God 
at all ; and thus we are safe in this, that when- 
ever we find any doctrine preached by any human 
being which insults our sense of justice and love, 
we may gladly reject it, saying that at least we 
will not believe that God gives us the power, on 
the one hand, to recognise our highest and truest 
instincts, and on the other directs us to outrage 
them. Such teaching as this we can infallibly 
recognise as a human perversion and not as a 
divine message ; and we may thankfully and 
gratefully believe that the obstacles and diffi- 
culties, the temptations and troubles, which seem 
to be strewn so thickly in our path, are to de- 
velop rather than to thwart our strivings after 
good, and assuredly designed to minister to our 
ultimate happiness, rather than to our ultimate 
despair. 

April 25, 1889. 
I found to-day on a shelf a Manual of Prepara- 
tion for Holy Communion, which was given me 
when I was confirmed. I stood a long time read- 
ing it, and little ghosts seemed to rustle in its 
pages. How well I remember using it, diligently 
and carefully, trying to force myself into the atti- 



The Meaning of Sin 163 

tude of mind that it inculcated, and humbly and 
sincerely believing myself wicked, reprobate, 
stony-hearted, because I could not do it success- 
fully. Shall I make a curious confession ? From 
quite early days, the time of first waking in the 
morning has been apt to be for me a time of men- 
tal agitation ; any unpleasant and humiliating 
incident, any disagreeable prospect, have always 
tended to dart into my brain, which, unstrung 
and weakened by sleep, has often been disposed 
to view things with a certain poignancy of dis- 
tress at that hour — a distress which I always 
knew would vanish the moment I felt my feet on 
the carpet. I used to take advantage of this to 
use my Manual at that hour, because by that I 
secured a deeper intensity of repentance, and I 
have often succeeded in inducing a kind of tearful 
condition by those means, which I knew perfectly 
well to be artificial, but which yet seemed to 
comply with the rules of the process. 

The kind of repentance indicated in the book 
as appropriate was a deep abasement, a horror 
and a hatred of one's sinful propensities ; and the 
language used seems to me now not only hollow 
and meaningless, but to insult the dignity of the 
soul, and to be indeed a profound confession of a 



164 The Altar Fire 

want of confidence in the methods and purposes 
of God. Surely the right attitude is rather a 
manly, frank, and hopeful co-operation with God, 
than a degraded kind of humiliation. One was 
invited to contemplate God's detestation of sin, 
His awful and stainless holiness. How unreal, 
how utterly false ! It is no more reasonable than 
to inculcate in human beings a sense of His ha- 
tred of weakness, of imperfection, of disease, of 
suffering. One might as well say that God's 
courage and beauty were so perfect that He had 
an impatient loathing for anything timid or ugly. 
If one said that being perfect He had an infinite 
pity for imperfection, that would be nearer the 
truth — but, even so, how far away ! To believe 
in His perfect love and benevolence, one must 
also believe that all shortcomings, all tempta- 
tions, all sufferings, somehow emanate from Him ; 
that they are educative, and have an intense and 
beautiful significance — that is what one strug- 
gles, how hardly, to believe ! Those childish sins, 
they were but the expression of the nature one 
received from His hand, that wilful, pleasure- 
loving, timid, fitful nature, which yet always 
desired the better part, if only it could compass 
it, choose it, love it. To hate one's nature and 



A Difficult Compromise 165 

temperament and disposition, how impossible, 
unless one also hated the God who had bestowed 
them ! And then, too, how inextricably inter- 
twined ! The very part of one's soul that made 
one peace-loving, afifectionate, trustful was the 
very thing that led one into temptation. The 
very humility and diffidence that made one hate 
to seem to be superior to others was the occasion 
of falling. The religion recommended was a 
religion of scrupulous saints and self-torturing 
ascetics ; and the result of it was to make one, as 
experience widened and deepened, mournfully 
indifferent to an ideal which seemed so utterly 
out of one's reach. It is very difficult to make 
the right compromise. On the one hand, there 
is the sense of moral responsibility and effort, 
which one desires to cultivate ; on the other 
hand, truth compels us to recognise our limita- 
tions, and to confess boldly the fact that moral 
improvement is a very difficult thing. The ques- 
tion is whether, in dealing with other people, we 
will declare what we believe to be the truth, 
or whether we will tamper with the truth for 
a good motive. Ought we to pretend that 
we think a person morally responsible and 
morally culpable, when we believe that he 



1 66 The Altar Fire 

is neither, for the sake of trying to improve 
him? 

My own practice now is to waste as little time 
as possible in ineffectual regrets, but to keep alive 
as far as I can in my heart a hope, a desire, that 
God will help to bring me nearer to the ideal that 
I can perceive and cannot reach. To-day, turning 
over the pages of the old Manual, with its fan- 
tastic strained phrases staring at me from the 
page, I cannot help wishing that some wise and 
tender person had been able to explain to me the 
conditions as I now see them. Probably the 
thing was incommunicable; one must learn for 
oneself both one's bitterness and one's joy. 

May 2, 1889. 
It sometimes happens to me — I suppose it hap- 
pens to every one — to hear some well-meaning 
person play or sing at a party. I^ast night, at 
the Simpsons', a worthy young man, who was 
staying there, sang some Schubert songs in a 
perfectly correct, weak, inexpressive voice, ac- 
companying himself in a wooden and inanimate 
fashion — the whole thing might have been turned 
out by a machine. I was, I suppose, in a fretful 
mood. ** Good God!" I thought to myself. 



The Song 167 

*'what is the meaning of this woful perform- 
ance? — a party of absurd dressed-up people, who 
have eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a 
circle in this hot room listening gravely to this 
lugubrious performance ! And this is the best 
that Schubert can do ! This is the real Schubert ! 
Here have I been all my life pouring pints of 
subjective emotion into this dreary writer of songs, 
believing that I was stirred and moved, when it 
was my own hopes and aspirations all along which 
I was stuffing into this conventional vehicle, just 
as an ecclesiastical person puts his emotion into 
the grotesque repetitions of a liturgy. ' ' I thought 
to myself that I had made a discovery, and that 
all was vanity. Well, we thanked the singer 
gravely enough, and went on, smiling and grim- 
acing, to talk local gossip. A few minutes later, 
a young girl, very shy and painfully ingenuous, 
was hauled protesting to the piano. I could see 
her hands tremble as she arranged her music, 
and the first chords she struck were halting and 
timid. Then she began to sing — it was some 
simple old-fashioned song — what had happened ? 
the world was somehow different ; she had one of 
those low, thrilling voices, charged with utterly 
inexplicable emotion, haunted with old mysterious 



1 68 The Altar Fire 

echoes out of some region of dreams, so near and 
yet so far away. I do not think that the girl 
had any great intensity of mind, or even of soul, 
neither was she a great performer; but there was 
some strange and beautiful quality about the 
voice, that now rose clear and sustained, while 
the accompaniment charged and tinged the pure 
notes with glad or mournful visions, like wine 
poured into water; now the voice fell and lin- 
gered, like a clear stream among rocks, pathetic, 
appealing, stirring a deep hunger of the spirit, 
and at the same time hinting at a hope, — at a se- 
cret almost within one's grasp. How can one find 
words to express a thing so magical, so inex- 
pressible ? But it left me feeling as though to 
sing thus was the one thing worth doing in the 
world, because it seemed to interpret, to reveal, 
to sustain, to console — it was as though one 
opened a door in a noisy, dusty street, and saw 
through it a deep and silent glen, with woodlands 
stooping to a glimmering stream, with a blue 
stretch of plain beyond, and an expanse of sunnj^ 
seas on the rim of the sky. 

I have had similar experiences before. I have 
looked in a gallery at picture after picture — 
bright, soulless, accomplished things— and asked 



The Joy of Art 169 

myself how it was possible for men and women 
to spend their time so elaborately to no purpose ; 
and then one catches sight of some little sketch — '■ 
a pool in the silence of high summer, the hot sun 
blazing on tall trees full of leaf, and rich water- 
plants, with a single figure in a moored boat, 
musing dreamily ; and at once one is transported 
into a region of thrilled wonder. What is it all 
about? What is this sudden glimpse into a life 
so rich and strange ? In what quiet country is it 
all enacted, what land of sweet visions ? What 
do the tall trees and the sleeping pool hide from 
me, and in what romantic region of joy and sad- 
ness does the dreamer muse for ever, in the long 
afternoon, so full of warmth and fragrance and 
murmurous sound ? That is the joy of art, of the 
symbol — that it remains and rests within itself 
in a world that seems, for a moment, more real 
and true than the clamorous and obtrusive world 
we move in. 

It is so all along the line — the hard and soulless 
art of technique and rule, of tradition and precept, 
however accomplished, however perfect it is, is 
worth nothing ; it is only another drear>" form 
of labour, unless through some faculty of the 
spirit, some vital intensity, or even some inex- 



I70 The Altar Fire 

plicable felicity, not comprehended, not designed, 
not intended by the artist, it has this remote and 
suggestive quality. And thus suddenly, in the 
midst of this weary beating of instruments, this 
dull laying of colour by colour, of word by word, 
there breaks in the awful and holy presence ; and 
then one feels, as I have said, that this thrill, this 
message, this oracle, is the one thing in the world 
worth striving after, and that indeed one may 
forgive all the dull efforts of those who cannot 
attain it, because perhaps they too have felt the 
call, and have thrown themselves into the eternal 
quest. 

And it is true too of life ; one is brought near 
to many people, and one asks oneself in a chilly 
discomfort what is the use of it all, living thus 
in hard and futile habits, on dull and conventional 
lines ; and then again one is suddenly confronted 
by some personality, rich in hope and greatness, 
touching the simplest acts of life with an un- 
earthly light, making them gracious and beautiful, 
and revealing them as the symbols of some pure 
and high mystery. Sometimes this is revealed 
by a word, sometimes by a glance ; perfectly vir- 
tuous, capable, successful people may miss it; 
humble, simple, quiet people may have it. One 



The Art of Living 171 

cannot analyse it or describe it ; but one has 
instantaneously a sense that life is a thing of 
large issues and great hopes ; that every action 
and thought, however simple or commonplace, 
may be touched with this large quality of interest, 
of significance. It is a great happiness to meet 
such a person, because one goes in the strength 
of that heavenly meat many days and nights, 
knowing that life is worth living to the uttermost, 
and that it can all be beautiful and lofty and 
gracious ; but the way to miss it, to lose that fine 
sense, is to have some dull and definite design of 
one's own, which makes one treat all the hours 
in w^hich one cannot pursue it, but as the dirt and 
debris of a quarry. One must not, I see, wait for 
the golden moments of life, because there are no 
moments that are not golden, if one can but 
pierce into their essence. Yet how is one to 
realise this, to put it into practice? I have of 
late, in m}^ vacuous mood, fallen into the dark 
error of thinking of the weary hours as of things 
that must be just lived through, and endured, 
and beguiled, if possible, until the fire again fall. 
But life is a larger and a nobler business than 
that ; and one learns the lesson sooner, if one 
takes the suffering home to one's soul, not as a 



172 The Altar Fire 

tedious interlude, but as the very melody and 
march of life itself, even though it crash into dis- 
cords, or falter in a sombre monotony. 

The point is that when one seems to be playing 
a part to one's own satisfaction, when one appears 
to oneself to be brilliant, suggestive, inspiriting, 
and genial, one is not necessarily ministering to 
other people ; while, on the other hand, when 
one is dull, troubled, and anxious, out of heart 
and discontented, one may have the chance of 
making others happier. Here is a whimsical 
instance ; in one of my dreariest days — I was in 
lyondon on business— I sate next to an old friend, 
generally a very lively, brisk, and cheerful man, 
who appeared to me strangely silent and de- 
pressed. I led him on to talk freely, and he told 
me a long tale of anxieties and cares ; his health 
was unsatisfactory, his plans promised ill. In 
trying to paint a brighter picture, to reassure and 
encourage him, I not only forgot my own troubles, 
but put some hope into him. We had met, two 
tired and dispirited men, we went away cheered 
and encouraged, aware that we were not each of 
us the only sufferer in the world and that there 
were possibilities still ahead of us all, nay, in our 
grip, if we only were not blind and forgetful. 



The Design 173 

3fay 8, 1889. 

I saw the other day a great artist working on a 
picture in its initial stages. There were a few 
lines of a design roughly traced, and there was a 
little picture beside him, where the scheme was 
roughly worked out ; but the design itself was 
covered with strange wild smears of flaring, furi- 
ous colour, flung crudely upon the canvas. ' ' I 
find it impossible to believe," I said, — "forgive 
me for speaking thus — that these ragged stains 
and splashes of colour can ever be subdued and 
harmonised and co-ordinated." The great man 
smiled. *' What would you have said, I wonder," 
he replied, "if you had seen, as I once did, a 
picture of Rossetti's in an early stage, with the 
face and arms of one of his strange and mysteri- 
ous figures roughl}^ painted in in the brightest 
ultramarine? Many of these fantastic scraps of 
colour will disappear altogether from the eye, 
just lending tone to something which is to be 
superimposed upon them." 

I have since reflected that this makes a beauti- 
ful parable of our lives. Some element comes 
Into our experience, some suffering, some anxiety, 
and we tend to say impatiently, " Well, whatever 
happens, this at least can never appear just or 



174 The Altar Fire 

merciful." But God, like a wise and perfect 
artist, foresees the end in the beginning. We 
who live in time and space, can merely see the 
rough, crude tints flung fiercely down, till the 
thing seems nothing but a frantic patchwork of 
angry hues ; but God sees the blending and the 
softening ; how the soft tints of face and hand, of 
river and tree, will steal over the coarse back- 
ground, and gain their strength and glory from 
the hidden stains. Perhaps we have sometimes 
the comfort of seeing how some old and ugly ex- 
perience melted into and strengthened some soft, 
bright quality of heart or mind. Staring mourn- 
fully as we do upon the tiny circumscribed space 
of life, we cannot conceive how the design will 
work itself out ; but the day will come when we 
shall see it, too ; and perhaps the best moments 
of life are those when we have a secret inkling of 
the process that is going so slowly and surely 
forward, as the harsh lines and hues become the 
gracious lineaments of some sweet face, and 
from the glaring patch of hot colour is revealed 
the remote and shining expanse of a sunlit sea. 

May 14, 1889. 
There used to be a favourite subject for 



The Divine Sculpture 175 

scholastic disputation whether Hercules is vi the 
marble. The image is that of the sculptor, who 
sees the statue lie, so to speak, imbedded in the 
marble block, and whose duty it is to carve it, 
neither cutting too deep nor too shallow, so that 
the perfect form is revealed. The idea of the dis- 
putation is the root-idea of idealistic philosophy. 
That each man is, as it were, a block of marble in 
which the ideal man is buried. The purpose of 
the educator ought to be to cut the form out, 
TtepinoTireiy^ as Plato has it. 

What a lofty and beautiful thought ? To feel 
about oneself that the perfect form is there, and 
that the experience of life is the process of cutting 
it out — a process full of pain, perhaps, as the 
great splinters and flakes fly and drop — a rough, 
brutal business it seems at first, the hewing ofl" 
great masses of stone, so firmly compacted, fused, 
and concreted together. At first it seems un- 
intelligible enough ; but the dints become 
minuter and minuter, here a grain and there an 
atom, till the smooth and shapely limbs begin to 
take shape. At first it seems a mere bewildered 
loss, a sharp pang as one parts with what seems 
one' s verj' self. How long before the barest struc- 
ture becomes visible ? but when one once gets a 



1 76 The Altar Fire 

dim inkling of what is going on, as the stubborn 
temper yields, as the face takes on its noble 
frankness, and the shapel}^ limbs emerge in all 
the glory of free line and curve, how gratefully 
and vehemently one co-operates, how little a thing 
the endurance of mere pain becomes by the side of 
the consciousness that one is growing into the 
likeness of the divine. 

May 23, 1889. 

When Goethe was writing Werther he wrote to 
his friend Kestner, ' ' I am working out my own 
situation in art, for the consolation of gods and 
men." That is a fine thing to have said, proceed- 
ing from so sublime an egoism, so transcendent 
a pride, that it has hardly a disfiguring touch of 
vanity about it. He did not add that he was also 
working in the situation of his friend Kestner, 
and Kestner' s wife, Charlotte ; though when they 
objected to having been thus used as material, 
Goethe apologised profusely, and in the same 
breath told them, somewhat royally, that they 
ought to be proud to have been thus honoured. 
But that is the reason why one admires Goethe 
.so much and worships him so little. One admires 
him for the wa}^ in which he strode ahead, turn- 



Ethical Standards 177 

ing corner after corner in the untravelled road of 
art, with such insight, such certainty, interpreting 
and giving form to the thought of the world ; but 
one does not worship him, because he had no 
tenderness or care for humanity. He knew 
whither he was bound, but he did not trouble 
himself about his companions. The great leaders 
of the world are those who have said to others, 
" Come with me— let us find light and peace to- 
gether ! " — But Goethe said, " Follow me if you 
can !" Some one, writing of that age, said that 
it was a time when men had immense and far- 
reaching desires, but feeble wills. They lost 
themselves in the melancholy of Hamlet and 
luxuriated in their own sorrows. That was not 
the case with Goethe himself; there never was 
an artist who was less irresolute. 

One of the reasons, I think, why w^e are weak 
in art, at the present time, is because we refer 
everything to conventional ethical standards. 
We are always arraigning people at the bar of 
morality, and what we judge them mainly by is 
their strength or weakness of will. Blake thought 
differently. He always maintained that men 
would be judged for their intellectual and artistic 
perception, by their good or bad taste. 



178 The Altar Fire 

But surely it is all a deep-seated mistake ; one 
might as well judge people for being tall or short, 
ugly or beautiful. The only thing for which I 
think most people would consent to be judged, 
which is after all what matters, is whether they 
have yielded consciously to mean, prudent, timid, 
conventional motives in life. It is not a question 
of success or failure ; it is rather whether one has 
acted largely, freely, generously, or whether one 
has acted politely, timidly, prudently. 

In the Gospel, the two things for which it seems 
to be indicated that men will be judged are, 
whether they have been kind, and whether they 
have improved upon what has been given them. 
And therefore the judgment seems to depend ra- 
ther upon what men desire than upon what they 
effect, upon attitude rather than upon perform- 
ance. But it is all a great mystery, because no 
amount of desiring seems to give us what we de- 
sire. The two plain duties are to commit our- 
selves to the Power that made us, and to desire 
to become what He would have us become ; and 
one must also abstain from any attempt to judge 
other people— that is the unpardonable sin. 

In art, then, a man does his bestif, like Goethe, 
he works his own situation into art for the conso- 



Consolation 179 

lation of gods and men. His own situation is the 
only thing he can come near to perceiving ; and if 
he draws it faithfully and beautifully, he consoles 
and he encourages. That is the best and noblest 
thing he can do, if he can express or depict any- 
thing which may make oLher men feel that they 
are not alone, that others are treading the same 
path, in vSunshine or cloud ; anything which may 
help others to persevere, to desire, to perceive. 
The worst sorrows in life are not its losses and 
misfortunes, but its fears. And when Goethe said 
that it w^as for the consolation of gods as well as of 
men, he said a sublime thing, for if we believe that 
God made and loved us, may we not sympathise 
with Him for our blindness and hopelessness, for all 
the sad sense of injustice and perplexity that we 
feel as we stumble on our way ; all the accusing 
cries, all the despairing groans? Do not such 
things wound the heart of God ? And if a man can 
be brave and patient, and trust Him utterly, and 
bid others trust Him, is He not thereby consoled ? 
In these dark months, in which I have suffered 
much, there rises at times in my heart a strong in- 
tuition that it is not for nothing that I suffer. I 
cannot divine whom it is to benefit, or how it is to 
benefit au}^ one. One thing indeed saddens me, 



i8o The Altar Fire 

and that is to reflect that I have often allowed the 
record of old sadnesses to heighten my own sense 
of luxurious tranquillity and securit}^ Not so will 
I err again. I will rather believe that a mighty 
price is being paid for a mightier joy, that we are 
not astray in the wilderness out of the way, but 
that we are rather a great and loving company, 
guided onward to some far-off city of God, with 
infinite tenderness, and a love so great that we 
cannot even comprehend its depth and and its 
intensity. 

I sit, as I write, in my quiet room, the fragrant 
evening air floating in, surrounded by all the be- 
loved familiar things that have made my life sweet, 
easy, and delightful — books and pictures, that have 
brought me so many messages of beauty. I hear 
the voice of Maud overhead — she is telling the 
children a story, and I hear their voices break out 
every now and then into eager questions. Yet 
in ttie midst of all this peace and sweetness, I walk 
in loneliness and gloom, hardly daring, so faith- 
less and despairing I am, to let my heart go out to 
the love and goodness round me, for fear of losing 
it all, for fear that those souls I love may be with- 
drawn from me or I from them. In this I know 
that I am sadly and darkly wrong — the prudent 



Culture i8i 

coldness, the fear of sorrow pulls tae back ; irreso- 
lute, cowardl}^ base ! Yet even so I must trust 
the Hand that moulded me, and the Will that 
bade me be, just so and not otherwise. 

June 4, 1889. 
It is a melancholy reflection how very little the 
highest and most elaborate culture effects in the 
direction of producing creative and original writ- 
ing. Very few indeed of our great writers have 
been technically cultivated men. How little we 
look to the universities, where a lifetime devoted 
to the study of the nuances of classical expression 
is considered well spent, for any literature which 
either raises the intellectual temperature or en- 
riches the blood of the world ! The fact is that 
the highlj^-cultivated man tends to find himself 
mentally hampered by his cultivation, to wade in 
a sea of glue, as Tennyson said. It is partly that 
highly-cultivated minds grow to be subservient to 
authority, and to contemn experiment as rash 
and obstreperous. Partly also the least move- 
ment of the mind dislodges such a pile of prec- 
edents and phrases and aphorisms, stored and 
amassed by diligent reading, that the mind is en- 
cumbered by the thought that most things worth 



i82 The Altar Fire 

saying have been so beautifully said that repeti- 
tion is out of the question. Partly, too, a false 
and fastidious refinement lays hold of the mind ; 
and an intellect trained in the fine perception 
of ancient expression is unable to pass through 
the earlier stages through which a writer must 
pass, when the stream flows broken and turbid, 
when it appears impossi' le to capture and de- 
fine the idea which seems so intangible and 
indefinable. 

What an original writer requires is to be able 
to see a subject for himself, and then to express 
it for himself. The only cu tlvation he needs is 
just enough to realise that there are differences of 
subject and differences of expression, just enough 
to discern the general lines upon which subjects 
can be evolved, and to perceive that lucidity, 
grace, and force of expression are attainable. 
The over-cultivated man, after reading a master- 
piece, is crushed and flattened under his ad- 
miration; but the effect of a masterpiece upon an 
original spirit, is to make him desire to say some- 
thing else that rises in his soul, and to say it in 
his own words ; all he needs in the way of train- 
ing is just enough for him to master technique. 
The highly-cultivated man is as one dazzled by 



Culture and Imagination 183 

gazing upon the sun ; he has no eyes for anything 
else; a bright disc, imprinted upon his eyes, floats 
between him and every other object. 

The best illustration of this is the case of the 
great trio, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. 
All three started as poets. Coleridge was dis- 
tracted from poetry into metaphysics, mainly, I 
believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the tor- 
turing contemplation of his own moral impotence. 
He turned to philosophy to see if he could find 
some clue to the bewildering riddle of life, and 
he lost his way among philosophical speculations. 
Southey, on the other hand, a man of Spartan 
virtue, became a highly-cultivated writer; he 
sate in his spacious librar}^ of well-selected books, 
arranged with a finical preciseness, apportioning 
his day between various literary pursuits. He 
made an income; he wrote excellent ephemeral 
volumes; he gained a somewhat dreary reputa- 
tion. But Wordsworth, with his tiny bookshelf 
of odd tattered volumes, with pages of manu- 
script interleaved to supply missing passages, 
alone kept his heart and imagination active, 
by deliberate leisure, elaborate sauntering, un- 
ashamed idleness. 

The reason why very few uneducated persons 



i84 The Altar Fire 

have been writers of note, is because the}- have 
been unable to take up the problem at the right 
point. A writer cannot start absolutelj^ afresh; 
he must have the progress of thought behind 
him, and he must join the procession in due 
order, Therefore the best outfit for a writer is 
to have just enough cultivation to enable him to 
apprehend the drift and development of thought, 
to discern the social and emotional problems that 
are in the air, so that he can interpret — that is the 
secret — the thoughts that are astir, but which 
have not yet been brought to the birth. He must 
know enough and not too much; he must not 
dim his perception by acquainting himself in de- 
tail with what has been said or thought ; he must 
not take off the freshness of his mind by too 
much intellectual gymnastics. It is a race across 
country for which he is preparing, and he will 
learn better what the practical difficulties are by 
daring excursions of his own, than by acquiring 
a formal suppleness in prescribed exercises. 

The originality and the output of the writer are 
conditioned by his intellectual and vital energy. 
Most men require all their energy for the ordinary 
pursuits of life; all creative work is the result of a 
certain superabundance of mental force. If this 



Accumulated Literature 185 

force is used up in social duties, in professional 
business, even in the pursuit of a high degree of 
mental cultivation, originality must suffer; and 
therefore a man whose aim is to write, ought 
resolutel}' to limit his activities. What would be 
idleness in another is for him a storing of forces ; 
what in an ordinary man would be malingering 
and procrastination, is for the writer the repose 
necessary to allow his energies to concentrate 
themselves upon his chosen work. 

June 8, 1889. 
I have been looking at a catalogue, this morning, 
of the publications of a firm that is always bring- 
ing out new editions of old writers. I suppose 
they find a certain sale for these books, or they 
would not issue them; and yet I cannot conceive 
who buys them in their thousands, and still less 
who reads them. Teachers, perhaps, of literature; 
or people who are inspired by local lectures to go 
in search of culture ? It is a great problem, this 
accumulation of literature; and it seems to me a 
very irrational thing to do to republish the com- 
plete works of old authors, who perhaps, in the 
midst of a large mass of essentially second-rate 
work, added half-a-dozen lyrics to the literature of 



1 86 The Altar Fire 

the world. But surely it is time that we began to 
select ? Whatever else there is time for in this 
world, there certainly is not time to read old 
half- forgotten second-rate work. Of course people 
who are making a special study of an age, a 
period, a school of writers, have to plough through 
a good deal that is not intrinsically worth reading; 
but, as a rule, when a man has done this, instead of 
saying boldly that the greater part of an author's 
writings may be wisely neglected and left alone, 
he loses himself in the critical discrimination and 
the chronological arrangement of inferior composi- 
tions ; perhaps he rescues a few lines of merit out 
of a mass of writing; but there is hardly time 
now to read long ponderous poems for the sake of 
a few fine flashes of emotion and expression. 
What, as a rule, distinguislies the work of the 
amateur from the work of the great writer is that 
an amateur will retain a poem for the sake of a 
few good lines, wlier<;as a great writer will re- 
lentlessly sacrifice a few fine phrases, if the whole 
structure and texture of the poem is loose and 
unsatisfactory. The only chance of writing some- 
thing that will live is to be sure that the whole 
thing — book, essay, poem, — is perfectly pro- 
portioned, firm, hammered, definite. The sign 



Correct Information 187 

and seal of a great writer is that he has either the 
patience to improve loose work, or the courage to 
sacrifice it. 

But most readers are so irrational, so submis- 
sive, so deferential, that they will swallow an 
author whole. They think dimly that they can ar- 
rive at a certain kind of culture by knowledge ; but 
knowledge has nothing to do with it. The point is 
to have perception, emotion, discrimination. This 
is where education fails so grievously, that teachers 
of this independent and perceptive process are so 
rare, and that teaching too often falls into the 
hands of conscientious people, with good memories, 
who think that it benefits the mind to load it witii 
facts and dates, and forget, or do not know, that 
what is needed is a sort of ardent inner fire, that 
consumes the debris and fuses the ore. 

In that dry, ugly, depressing book, Har?y a fid 
Ljicy, which I used to read in my youth, there is a 
terrible father, kind, virtuous, conscientious, whose 
one idea seems to be to encourage the children to 
amass correct information. The party is driving 
in a chaise together, and Lucy begins to tell a 
story of a little girl, Kitty Maples b}^ name, whom 
she has met at her Aunt Pierrepoint's; it seems as 
if the conversation is for once to be enlightened by 



1 88 The Altar Fire 

a ray of human interest, but the name is hardly 
out of her hps, when the father directs her at- 
tention to a building beside the road, and adds, 
"Let us talk of things rather than of people." 
The building turns out to be a sugar-refinery, or 
some equally depressing place, and the unhappy 
children are initiated into its mysteries. What 
could be more cheerless and dispiriting ? Lucy is 
represented as a high-spirited and somewhat giddy 
child, who is always being made aware of her 
moral deficiencies. 

One looks forward sadly to the time when 
nature has been resolutely expelled by a know- 
ledge of dynamics and statics, and when Lucy, 
with children of her own, will be directing their 
attention away from childish fancies, to the fact 
that the poker is a lever, and that curly hair is a 
good hygrometer. 

Plenty of homely and simple virtues are incul- 
cated in Harry a7id Lucy ; but the attitude of 
mind that must inevitably result from such an 
education is hard, complacent, and superior. 
The children are scolded out of superficial vani- 
ties, and their place is occupied by a satanical 
sort of pride — the pride of possessing correct in- 
formation. 



Use of Books 189 

What does one want to make of one's own 
children ? One wants them to be generous, 
affectionate, simple-minded, just, temperate in 
the moral region. In the intellectual region, one 
desires them to be alert, eager, independent, per- 
ceptive, interested. I like them to ask a hundred 
questions about what they see and hear. I want 
them to be tender and compassionate to animals 
and insects. As for books, I want them to follow 
their own taste, but I surround them only with 
the best ; but even so I want them to have minds 
of their own, to have preferences, and reasons 
for their preferences. I do not want them to 
follow my taste, but to trust their own. I do 
not in the least care about their amassing correct 
information. It is much better that they should 
learn how to use books. It is very strange how 
theories of education remain imper\nous to de- 
velopment. In the days when books were scarce 
and expensive, when knowledge was not formu- 
lated and summarised, men had to depend largely 
on their own stores. But now, what is the use of 
books, if one is still to load one's memory with 
details ? The training of memory is a very un- 
important part of education nowadays ; people 
with accurate memories are far too apt to trust 



iQO The Altar Fire 

them, and to despise verification. Indeed a well- 
filled memory is a great snare, because it leads 
the possessor of it to believe, as I have said, that 
knowledge is culture. A good digestion is more 
important to a man than the possession of many 
sacks of corn ; and what one ought rather to 
cultivate nowadays is mental digestion. 

June 14, 1889. 

It is comforting to reflect how easy it is to 
abandon habits, and how soon a new habit takes 
the place of the old. Some months ago I put 
writing aside in despair, feeling that I was turn- 
ing away from the most stable thing in life ; yet 
even now I have learned largely to acquiesce in 
silence ; the dreary and objectless mood visits me 
less and less frequently. What have I found to 
fill the place of the old habit ? I have begun to 
read much more widely, and recognise how very 
ill-educated I am. In my writing days, I used 
to read mainly for the purposes of my books, or, 
if I turned aside to general reading at all, it was 
to personal, i?ttime^ subjective books that I 
turned, books in which one could see the de- 
velopment of character, analyse emotion, acquire 
psychological experience ; but now I find a 



New Habits 191 

growing interest in sociological and historical 
ideas ; a mist begins to roll away from my mental 
horizon, and I realise how small was the circle in 
which I was walking. I sometimes find myself 
hoping that this may mean the possibility of a 
wider flight ; but I do not, strange to say, care 
very much about the prospect. Just at present, 
I appear to myself to have been like a botanist 
walking in a great forest, looking out only for 
small typical specimens of certain classes of 
ground-plants, without any eyes for the lux- 
urious vegetation, the beauty of the rich 
opening glade, the fallen day of the dense 
underwood. 

Then too I have begun to read regularly with 
the children ; I did it formerly, but only fitfully, 
and I am sorry to say grudgingly. But now it 
has become a matter of intense interest to me, to 
see how thoughts strike on eager and ingenuous 
minds. I find my trained imagination a great 
help here, because it gives me the power of 
clothing a bare scene with detail, and of giving 
vitality to an austere figure. I have made all 
sorts of discoveries, to me astonishing and de- 
lightful, about my children. I recognise some of 
their qualities and modes of thought ; but there 



192 The Altar Fire 

are whole ranges of qualities apparent, of which 
I cannot even guess the origin. One thinks of a 
child as deriving its nature from its parents, and 
its experience from its surroundings ; but there is 
much beside that, original views, unexpected 
curiosities, and, strangest of all, things that seem 
almost like dim reminiscences floated out of other 
far-off lives. They seem to infer so much that 
they have never heard, to perceive so much that 
they have never seen, to know so much that they 
have never been told. Bewildering as this is in 
the intellectual region, it is still more marvellous 
in the moral region. They scorn, they shudder 
at, they approve, they love, as by some generous 
instinct, qualities of which they have had no ex- 
perience. " I don't know what it is, but there 
is something wrong about Cromwell, ' ' said Maggie 
gravely, when we had been reading the history of 
the Commonwealth. Now Cromwell is just one 
of those characters which, as a rule, a child 
accepts as a model of rigid virtue and public 
spirit. Alec, whose taste is all for soldiers and 
sailors just now, and who might, one would have 
thought, have been dazzled by military glory, 
pronounced Napoleon ' * rather a common man. ' ' 
This arose purely in the boy's own mind, because 



Teaching 193 

I am very careful not to anticipate any judg- 
ments ; I think it of the highest importance that 
they should learn to form their own opinions, so 
that we never attempt to criticise a character until 
we have mastered the facts of his life. 

Another thing I am doing with them, which 
seems to me to develop intelligence pleasurably 
and rapidly, is to read them a passage or an 
episode, and then to require them to relate it or 
write it in their own words. T don't remember 
that this was ever done for me in the whole 
course of my elaborate education ; and the speed 
with which they have acquired the art of seizing 
on salient points is to me simply marvellous. I 
have my reward in such remarks as these which 
Maud repeated to me yesterday. ''lessons," 
said Alec gravely, ' ' have become ever so much 
more fun since we began to do them with father." 
" Fun ! " said Maggie, with indignant emotion ; 
' ' they are not lessons at all now ! " I certainly 
do not observe any reluctance on their part to set 
to work, and I do see a considerable reluctance to 
stop ; yet I don't think there is the least strain 
about it. But it is true I save them all the 
stupid and irksome work that made my own 

acquisition of knowledge so bitter a thing. We 
»3 



194 The Altar Fire 

read French together ; my own early French 
lessons were positively disgusting, partly from 
the abominable little books on dirty paper and in 
bad type that we read, and partly from the absurd 
character of the books chosen. The Cid and 
Voltaire's Charles XII. ! I used to wonder dimly 
how it was ever worth any one's while to string 
such ugly and meaningless sentences together. 
Now I read with the children Sans Famille and 
Colomba ; and they acquire the language with 
incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they 
do not know ; and we have a simple system of 
emulation, by which the one who recollects first a 
word we have previously had, receives a mark ; 
and the one who first reaches a total of a hundred 
marks gets sixpence. The adorable nature of 
women ! Maggie, whose verbal memory is excel- 
lent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence 
on a present to console Alec for the indignity of 
having been beaten. Then, too, they write letters 
in French to their mother, which are solemnly 
sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, 
but it is amazingly flexible ; and it is delicious to 
see the children at breakfast watching Maud as 
she opens the letters and smiles over them. 

Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of 



The System 195 

education ; it certainl}^ seems to fulfil its purpose 
very wonderfully in making them alert, inquisi- 
tive, eager, and without any shadow of priggish - 
ness. It is established as a principle that it is 
stupid not to know things, and still more stupid 
to try and make other people aware that you 
know them ; and the apologies with which Mag- 
gie translated a French menu at a house where 
we stayed with the children the other day 
were delightful to behold. 

I am very anxious that they should not be 
priggish, and I do not think they are in any 
danger of becoming so. I suppose I rather skim 
the cream of their education, and leave the duller 
part to the governess, a nice, tranquil person, 
w^ho lives in the village, the daughter of a pre- 
vious vicar, and comes in in the mornings. I 
don't mean that their interest and alertness does 
not vary, but they are obedient and active-minded 
children, and they prefer their lessons with me 
so much that it has not occurred to them to be 
bored. If they flag, I don't press them. I tell 
them a story, or show them pictures. While 
I write these words in my armchair, they are 
sitting at the table, writing an account of some- 
thing I have told them. Maggie lays down her 



196 The Altar Fire 

pen with a sigh of satisfaction. ' ' There, that is 
beautiful ! But I dare say it is not as good as 
yours, Alec." " Don't interrupt me," says Alec 
sternly, "and don't push against me when I 'm 
busy." Maggie looks round and concludes that 
I am busy too. In a minute. Alec will have 
done, and then I shall read the two pieces aloud ; 
then we shall criticise them respectfully. The 
aim is to make them frankly recognise the good 
points of each other's compositions as well as the 
weak points, and this they are very ready to do. 
In all this I do not neglect the physical side. 
They can ride and swim. They go out in all 
weathers and get wholesomely wet, dirty, and 
tired. Games are a difficulty, but I want them to 
be able, if necessary, to do without games. We 
botanise, we look for nests, we geologise, we 
study birds through glasses, we garden. It is all 
very unscientific but they observe, they perceive, 
they love the countn/. Moreover, Maud has a 
passion for knowing all the village people, and 
takes the children with her, so that they really 
know the village-folk all round ; they are cer- 
tainly tremendously happy and interested in every- 
thing. Of course they are volatile in their tastes, 
but I rather encourage that. I know that in the 



Volatile Tastes 197 

little old moral books the idea was that nothing 
should be taken up by children, unless it was done 
thoroughly and perseveringly ; but I had rather 
that they had a wide experience ; the time to se- 
lect and settle down upon a pursuit is not yet, and 
I had rather that they found out for themselves 
what they care about, than practise them in a pre- 
mature patience. The only thing I object to is 
their taking up something which they have tried 
and dropped ; then I do require a pledge that they 
shall stick to it. I say to them, '' I don't mind 
how many things you try, and if you find you don' t 
care about one, you may give it up when you have 
given it a trial ; but it is a bad thing to be always 
changing, and everybody can't do everything ; so 
don 't take up this particular thing again, unless 
you can give a good reason for thinking you will 
keep to it." 

One of the things I insist upon their doing, 
whether they like it or not, is learning to plaj^ 
the piano. There are innumerable people, I 
find, who regret not having been made to over- 
come the initial difficulties of music ; and the 
only condition I make is, that they shall be al- 
lowed to stop when they can play a simple 
piece of music at sight correctly, and when 



1 98 The Altar Fire 

they have learnt the simple rules of harmony. 
For teaching them geography, I have a simple 
plan ; m}^ own early geograph}^ lessons were to my 
recollection singularly dismal. I used, as far as I 
can remember, to learn lists of towns, rivers, capes, 
and mountains. Then there were horrible lists of 
exports and imports, such as hides, jute, and 
hardware. I did not know what any of the things 
were, and no one explained them to me. What 
we do now is this. I read up a book of travels, 
and then we travel in a country by means of 
atlases, while I describe the sort of landscape we 
should see, the inhabitants, their occupations, 
their religion, and show the children pictures. I 
can only say that it seems to be a success. They 
learn arithmetic with their governess, and what 
is aimed at is rapid and accurate calculations. 
As for religious instruction, we read portions of 
the Bible, striking scenes and stories, carefully se- 
lected, and the Gospel story, with plenty of pic- 
tures. But here I own I find a difficulty. With 
regard to the Old Testament, I have frankly 
told them that many of the stories are legends 
and exaggerations, like the legends, of other 
nations. That is not difficult ; I say that in old 
days when people did not understand science, 



Religious Teaching 199 

many things seemed possible which we know now 
to be impossible ; and that things which hap- 
pened naturall}', were often thought to have hap- 
pened supernaturally ; moreover, that both 
imagination and exaggeration crept in about fa- 
mous people. I am sure that there is a great dan- 
ger in teaching intelligent children that the Bible 
is all literally true. And then the difficulty comes 
in, that they ask artlessly whether such a story as 
the miracle of Cana, or the feeding of the five thou- 
sand, is true. I reply frankly that we cannot be 
sure ; that the people who wrote it down believed 
it to be true, but that it came to them by hearsay ; 
and the children seem to have no difficulty about 
the matter. Then, too, I do not want them to be 
too familiar, as children, with the words of Christ, 
because I am sure that it is a fact that, for many 
people, a mechanical familiarity with the Gospel 
language simply blurs and weakens the marvel- 
lous significance and beauty of the thought. It 
becomes so crystallised that they cannot penetrate 
it. I have treated some parts of the Gospel after 
the fashion of Philochristus, telling them a story, 
as though seen by some earnest spectator. I find 
that they take the deepest interest in these stories, 
and that the figure of Christ is very real and au- 



200 The Altar Fire 

gust to them. But I teach them no doctrine ex- 
cept the very simplest — the Fatherhood of God, 
the Divinity of Christ, the indwelling voice of the 
Spirit ; and I am sure that religion is a pure, 
sweet, vital force in their lives, not a harsh thing, 
a question of sin and punishment, but a matter of 
I^ove, Strength, Forgiveness, Holiness. The one 
thing I try to show them is that God was not, as 
I used to think, the property so to speak, of the 
Jews ; but that He is behind and above every race 
and nation, slowly leading them to the light. The 
two things I will not allow them to think of are 
the Doctrines of the Fall and the Atonement ; the 
doctrine of the Fall is contrary to all true know- 
ledge, the doctrine of the Atonement is inconsist- 
ent with every idea of Justice . But it is a difficult 
matter. They will hear sermons, and Alec, at 
school, may have dogmatic instruction given him ; 
but I shall prepare him for Confirmation here, and 
have him confirmed at home, and thus the main 
difficulty will be avoided ; neither do I conceal 
from them that good people think very difierently 
on these points. It is curious to remember that, 
brought up as I was on strict Evangelical lines, I 
was early inculcated into the sin of Schism, with 
the result that I hurried with my Puritan nurse 



A Primrose Path 201 

swiftly and violently by a Roman Catholic chapel 
and a Wesley an meeting-house which we used to 
pass in our walks, with a sense of horror and 
wickedness in the air. Indeed, I remember once 
asking my mother why God did not rain down fire 
and brimstone on these two places of worship, 
and received a very unsatisfactory answer. To 
develop such a spirit was, it seems to me, is a 
monstrous sin against Christian charity, and my 
children shall be saved from that. 

Meantime my own hours are increasingly filled. 
It takes me a long time to prepare for the child- 
ren's lessons ; and I have my reward abundantly 
in the delight of seeing their intelligence, their 
perception, their interest grow. I am determ- 
ined that the beginnings of knowledge shall be 
for them a primrose path ; I suppose there will 
have to be some stricter mental discipline later ; 
but they shall begin by thinking and expecting 
things to be interesting and delightful, before they 
realise that things can also be hard and dull. 

June 20, 1889. 
When I read books on education, when I listen 
to the talk of educational theorists, when I see 
syllabuses and schedules, schemes and curricula, 



202 The Altar Fire 

a great depression settles on my mind ; I fe.l I 
have no interest in education, and a deep distrust 
of theoretical methods. These things seem to 
aim at missing the very thing of v^hich we are in 
search, and to lose themselves in a sort of child- 
ish game, a marshalling of processions, a lust for 
organisation. I care so intensely for what it all 
means, I loathe so deeply the motives that seem 
at work, I suppose that the ordinary man con- 
siders a species of success, a bettering of himself, 
the acquisition of money and position and re- 
spectability, to be the end of life ; and such as 
these look upon education primarily as a means 
of arriving at their object. Such was the old 
education given by the sophists, which aimed at 
turning out a well-balanced, effective man. But 
all this, it seems to me, has the wrong end in 
view. The success of it depends upon the fact that 
every one is not so capable of rising, that the rank 
and file must be in the background, forming the 
material out of which the successful man makes his 
combinations, and whom he contrives to despoil. 
The result of it is that the well-educated man 
becomes hard, brisk, complacent, contemptuous, 
knowing his own worth, using his equipment for 
precise and definite ends. 



Education 203 

My idea would rather be that education should 
aim at teaching people how to be happy without 
success ; because the shadow of success is vul- 
garity, and vulgarity is the one thing which edu- 
cation ought to extinguish. What I desire is 
that men should learn to see what is beautiful, to 
find pleasure in homely work, to fill leisure with 
innocent enjoyment. If education, as the term 
is generally used, were widely and universally 
successful, the whole fabric of a nation would 
collapse, because no one thus educated would 
acquiesce in the performance of humble work. It 
is commonly said that education ought to make 
men dissatisfied, and teach them to desire to im- 
prove their position. It is a pestilent heresy. It 
ought to teach them to be satisfied with simple 
conditions, and to improve themselves rather 
than their position — the end of it ought to be to 
produce content. Suppose, for an instant — it 
sounds a fantastic hypothesis — that if a man born 
in the country, in the labouring class, were fond 
of field-work, a lover of the sights of nature in all 
her aspects, fond of good literature, why should 
he seek to change his conditions ? But education 
tends to make boys and girls fond of excitement, 
fond of town sociabilities and amusements, till 



204 The Altar Fire 

only the dull and unambitious are content to 
remain in the country. And yet the country 
work will have to be done until the end of time. 

It is a dark problem ; but it seems to me that 
we are only saved from disaster, in our well-meant 
efforts, by the simple fact that we cannot make 
humanity what we so short-sightedly desire to 
make it ; that the dull, uninspired, unambitious 
element has an endurance and a permanence 
which we cannot change if we would, and which 
it is well for us that we cannot change ; and that 
in spite of our curricula and schedules, mankind 
marches quietly upon its way to its unknown 
goal. 

June 28, 1889. 
An old friend has been staying with us, a very 
interesting man for many reasons, but principally 
for the fact that he combines two sets of qualities 
that are rarely found together. He has strong 
artistic instincts ; he would like, I think, to have 
been a painter ; he has a deep love of nature, 
woodland places, and quiet fields ; he loves old 
and beautiful buildings with a tenderness that 
makes it a real misery to him to think of their 
destruction, and even their renovation ; and he 



A Ruskinian 205 

has, too, the poetic passion for flowtjrs ; he is 
happiest in his garden. But besides all this, he 
has the Puritan virtues strongly developed ; he 
loves work, and duty, and simplicity of life, with 
all his heart ; he is an almost rigid judge of 
conduct and character, and sometimes flashes out 
in a half Pharisaical scorn against meanness, self- 
ishness, and weakness. He is naturally a pure 
Ruskinian ; he would like to destroy railways 
and machinery and manufactories ; he would 
like working-men to enjoy their work, and dance 
together on the village green in the evenings ; 
but he is not a faddist at all, and has the health- 
iest and simplest power of enjoyment. His 
severity has mellowed with age, while his love of 
beauty has, I think, increased ; he does not care 
for argument, and is apt to say pathetically that 
he knows that his fellow-disputant is right, but 
that he cannot change his opinions, and does not 
desire to. He is passing, it seems to me, into a 
very gracious and soft twilight of life ; he grows 
more patient, more tender, more serene. His 
face, always beautiful, has taken on an added 
beauty of faithful service and gracious sweetness. 
We began one evening to discuss a book that 
has lately been published, a book of very sad, 



2o6 The Altar Fire 

beautiful, wise, intimate letters, written by a 
woman of great perception, high intellectual gifts 
and passionate affections. These letters were 
published, not long after her death, by her child- 
ren, to whom many of them were addressed. 

He had read the book, I found, with deep 
emotion ; but he said very decidedly that it 
ought not to have been published, at all events 
so soon after the writer's death. I am inclined 
to defer greatly to his judgment, and still more to 
his taste, and I have therefore read the book again 
to see if I am inclined to alter my mind. I find 
that my feeling is the exact opposite of his in 
every way. I feel humbly and deeply grateful 
to the children who have given the letters to the 
world. Of course if there had been any idea 
in the mind of the writer that they would be 
published, she w^ould probably have been far 
more reticent ; but, as it was, she spoke with a 
perfect openness and simplicity of all that was in 
her mind. It is curious to reflect that I met the 
writer more than once, and thought her a cold, 
hard, unsympathetic woman. She had to endure 
many sorrows and bereavements, losing, by un- 
timely death, those whom she most loved ; but 
the revelation of her pain and bewilderment, and 



Privacy 207 

the sublime and loving resignation with which she 
bore it, has been to me a deep, holy, and reviving 
experience. Here was one who felt grief acutely, 
rebelliously, and passionately, yet whom sorrow 
did not sear or harden, suffering did not make 
self-absorbed or morbid, or pain make callous. 
Her love flowed out more richly and tenderly 
than ever to those who were left, even though the 
loss of those whom she loved remained an un- 
fading grief, an open wound. She did not even 
shun the scenes and houses that reminded her of 
her bereavements ; she did not withdraw from 
life, she made no parade of her sorrows. The 
whole thing is so wholesome, so patient, so de- 
voted, that it has shown me, I venture to say, a 
higher possibility in human nature of bearing 
intolerable calamities with sweetness and courage, 
than I had dared to believe. It seems to me that 
nothing more wise or brave could have been done 
by the survivors than to make these letters acces- 
sible to others. We English people make such a 
secret of our feelings, are so stubbornly reticent 
about the wrong things, have so false and stupid 
a sense of decorum, that I am infinitely grateful 
for this glimpse of a pure, patient, and devoted 
heart. It seems to me that the one thing worth 



2o8 The Altar Fire 

knowing in this world is what other people think 
and feel about the great experiences of life. The 
writers who have helped the world most are those 
who have gone deepest into the heart ; but the 
dullest part of our conventionality is that when a 
man disguises the secrets of his soul in a play, a 
novel, a lyric, he is supposed to have helped us 
and ministered to our deepest needs ; but if he 
speaks directly, in his own voice and person, of 
these things, he is at once accused of egotism and 
indecorum. It is not that we dislike sentiment 
and feeling ; we value it as much as any nation ; 
but we think that it must be spoken of symbolic- 
ally and indirectly. We do not consider a man 
egotistical, if he will only give himself a feigned 
name, and write of his experiences in the third 
person. But if he uses the personal pronoun, he 
is thought to be shameless. There are even 
people who consider it more decent to say '* one 
feels and one thinks, ' ' than to say ' ' I feel and I 
think." The thing that I most desire, in inter- 
course with other men and women, is that they 
vShould talk frankly of themselves, their hopes and 
fears, their beliefs and uncertainties. Yet how 
many people can do that ? Part of our English 
shyness is shown by the fact that people are often 



Vital Books 209 

curiously cautious about what they say, but 
entirely indiscreet in what they write. The only 
books which possess a real and abiding vitality 
are those in which personality is freely and 
frankly revealed. Of course there are one or two 
authors like Shakespeare who seem to have 
had the power of penetrating and getting inside 
any personality, but, apart from them, the books 
that go on being read and reread are the books in 
which one seems to clavSp hands with a human soul. 
I said many of these things to my friend, and 
he replied that he thought I was probably right, 
but that he could not change his opinion. He 
would not have had these letters published until 
all the survivors were dead. He did not think 
that the people who liked the book were actuated 
by good motives, but had merely a desire to pen- 
etrate behind the due and decent privacies of 
life ; and he would have stopped the publication 
of such letters if he could, because even if people 
liked them, it was not good for them to read 
them. He said that he himself felt on reading 
the book as if he had been listening at keyholes, 
or peeping in at windows, and seeing the natural 
endearments of husband and wife, mother and 
children. 



2IO The Altar Fire 

I said that what seemed to me to make a 
difference was whether the people thus espied 
were conscious of the espionage or not ; and 
that it was no more improper to have such things 
revealed in a book, than to have them described 
in a novel or shown upon the stage. Moreover, 
it seemed to me, I said, as though to reveal such 
things in a book was the perfect compromise. I 
feel strongly that each home, each circle has a 
right to its own privacy ; but I am not ashamed 
of my natural feelings and affections, and, by 
allowing them to appear in a book, I feel that I 
am just speaking of them simply to those who 
will understand. I desire communion with all 
sympathetic and like-minded persons ; but one's 
actual circle of friends is limited by time and 
space and physical conditions. People talk of 
books as if every one in ihe world was compelled 
to read them. My own idea of a book is that it 
provides a medium by which one may commune 
confidentially with people whom one may never 
see, but whom one is glad to know to be alive. 
One can make friends through one's books with 
people with whom one agrees in spirit, but whose 
bodily presence, modes of life, reticences, habits, 
would erect a barrier to social intercourse. It is 



Confidential Books 211 

so much easier to love and understand people 
through their books than through their conversa- 
tion. In books they put down their best, truest, 
most deliberate thoughts ; in talk, they are at the 
mercy of a thousand accidents and sensations. 
There were people who objected to the publica- 
tion of the Browning love-letters. To me thej' 
were the sacred and beautiful record of an in- 
tensely holy and passionate relation between two 
great souls ; and I can afford to disregard and 
to contemn the people who thought the book 
strained, unconventional, and shameless, for the 
sake of those whose faith in love and beauty was 
richly and generously nurtured by it. 

It seems to me that the whole progress of life 
and thought, of love and charity, depends upon 
our coming to understand each other. The hos- 
tile seclusion which some desire is really a savage 
and almost animal inheritance ; and the best part 
of civilisation has sprung from the generous 
self-revelation of kindly and honourable souls. 

I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, 
by wondering whether the person concerned 
would have liked or disliked the publication of 
these letters. I feel no sort of doubt that, as far 
as I am concerned, she would be only too willing 



212 The Altar Fire 

that I should thus have read and loved them, and 
I cannot believe that the disapprobation of a few- 
austere people, or the curiosity of a few vulgar 
people, would weigh in the balance for a moment 
against the joy of like-minded spirits. 

The worst dissatisfaction of life is the difficulty 
one has in drawing near to others, the foolish 
hardness, often only superficial, which makes one 
hold back from and repudiate intimacies. If I 
had known and loved a great and worthy spirit, 
and had been the recipient of his confidences, I 
should hold it a solemn duty to tell the world 
what I knew. I should care nothing for the 
carping of the cold and unsympathetic, but I 
should base my decision on an approval of all 
loving and generous souls. This seems to me 
the highest service that art can render, and if it 
be said that no question of art comes in, in the 
publication of such records as these letters, I 
would repl}' that they are themselves works of 
the highest and most instinctive art, because the 
world, its relations and affections, its loss and 
grief, its pain and suffering, are here seen pa- 
tiently mirrored and perfectly expressed by a 
most perceptive personality. The moment that 
emotions are depicted and represented, that mo- 



True and False Asceticism 213 

ment they have felt the holy and transfiguring 
power of art ; and then they pass out of the 
region of stuffy conventions and commonplace 
decorums into a finer and freer air. I do not 
deny that there is much vulgar inquisitiveness 
abroad, but that matters little ; and, for myself, 
I am glad to think that the world is moving in 
the direction of a greater frankness. I do not 
mean that a man has not a right to live his life 
privately, in his own house and his own circle, if 
he wills. But if that life is lived simply, gener- 
ously, and bravely, I welcome any ripple or ray 
from it that breaks in light and fragrance upon 
the harsher and uglier world. 

July I, 1889. 

I have just read an interesting sentence. I 
don't know where it comes from — I saw it in a 
book of extracts. 

" I am more and more convinced that the cure 
for sentiment, as for all weakened forms of strong 
things, is not to refuse to feel it, but to feel more 
in it. This seems to me to make the whole 
difference between a true and a false asceticism. 
The false goes for getting rid of what it is afraid 
of ; the true goes for using and making it serve ; 



2 14 The Altar Fire 

the one empties, the other fills ; the one ab- 
stracts, the other concentrates. ' ' 

There is a great deal of truth in this, and it is 
manfully put. Where it fails is, I think, in as- 
suming an amount of will-power and resolution 
in human character, which I suspect is not there. 
The system the writer recommends is a system 
that a strong character instinctively practises, 
moving through sentiment to emotion, naturally, 
and by a sturdy growth. But to tell a man to 
feel more in a thing, is like telling a man to be 
intelligent, benevolent, wise. It is just what no 
one can do. The various grades of emotion are 
not things like examinations, in which one can 
successively graduate. They are expressions of 
temperament. The sentimental man is the man 
who can go thus far and no farther. How shall 
one acquire vigour and generosity ? B\' behaving 
as if one was vigorous and generous, when one is 
neither ? I do not think it can be done in that* 
way. One can do something to check a ten- 
dency, very little to deepen it. What the writer 
calls false asceticism is the only brave and whole- 
some refuge of people, who know themselves well 
enough to know that they cannot trust them- 
selves. Take the case of one's relations with 



Sentiment 215 

other people. If a man drifts into sentimental 
relations with other people, attracted by charm of 
any kind, and knowing quite well that the rela- 
tion is built on charm, and that he will not be 
able to follow it into truer regions, I think he had 
probably better try to keep himself in check, not 
embrace a sentimental relation with a mild hope 
that it may develop into a real devotion. The 
strong man may try experiments, even though he 
burns his fingers. The weak man had better not 
meddle with the instruments and fiery fluids at 
all. 

I am myself just strong enough to dislike 
sentiment, to turn faint in the sickly, mawkish 
air. But I am not strong enough to charge it 
with vivid life. Moreover, the danger of a strong 
character taking up the anti- ascetic position is that 
he is apt to degenerate into a man like Goethe, 
who plucked the fragrant blooms on ever>^ side, 
and threw them relentlessly away when he had 
inhaled their sweetness. That is a cruel busi- 
ness, unless there is a very wise and tender heart 
behind. 

Yet again, reconsidering the whole problem, I 
am not sure that the whole suggestion, taken as 
advice, is not at fault. I think it is making a 



2i6 The Altar Fire 

melancholy, casuistical, ethical business out of 
what ought to be a natural process. I think it 
is vitiated by a principle which vitiates so much 
of the advice of moralists, the principle that 
one ought to aim at completeness and perfection. 
I don't believe that is the secret of life — indeed 
I think it is all the other way. One must of 
course do one's best to resist immoral, low, 
sensuous tendencies ; but otherwise I believe 
that one ought to drink as much as one's glass 
can hold of pure and beautiful influences. If 
sentiment is the nearest that a man can come 
to emotion, I think he had better take it thank- 
fully. It is this ethical prudence which is always 
weighing issues, and pulling up the plant to see 
how it grows, which is the weakening and the 
stunting thing. Of course any principle can be 
used sophistically ; but I think that many people 
commit a kind of idolatry by worshipping their 
rules and principles rather than by trusting God. 
It develops a larger and freer life, if one is 
not too cautious, too precise. Of course one 
must follow what light one has, and all lights 
are lit from God ; but if one watches the lanterns 
of moralists too anxiously, one may forget the 
stars. 



The Social Problem 217 

July 8, 1889. 
I lose myself sometimes in a dream of misery 
in thinking of the baseness and meanness and 
squalor that condition the lives of so many of the 
poor. Not that it is not possible under those 
conditions to live lives of simplicity and dignity 
and beauty. It is perfectly possible, but only, I 
think, for strong natures possessing a combination 
of qualities — virtue, industry, sense, prudence, 
and above all good physical health. There must 
still be thousands of lives which could be happy 
and simple and virtuous under more secure con- 
ditions, which are marred and degraded by the 
influences under which they are nurtured. Yet 
what can the more fortunate individual do in the 
matter ? If all the rich men in England were to 
resign to-morrow all the wealth they possessed, 
reserving only a bare modicum of subsistence, the 
matter could not be amended. Even that wealth 
could not be wisely applied ; and, if equally 
divided, it would hardly make any appreciable 
difference. What is worse, it would not alter the 
baneful influences in the least ; it would give no 
increased vSecurity of material conditions, and it 
would not affect the point at issue, namely, the 
tone and quality of thought and feeling, where 



2i8 The Altar Fire 

the only hope of real amelioration lies, and which 
is really the source and root of our social evils. 

Moreover, the real difficulty is not to see what 
the classes on whom the problem presses most 
grimly need, but what they want. It is no use 
theorising about it, and providing elegant re- 
medies which will not touch the evil. What one 
requires to know is what those natures, who lie 
buried in this weltering tide, and are dissatisfied 
and tormented by it, really desire. It is no use 
trying to provide a paradise on the farther bank 
of the river, till we have constructed bridges to 
cross the gulf. What one wants is that some one 
from the darkness of the other side should speak 
articulately and boldly what they claim, what 
they could use. It is not enough to have a wist- 
ful cry for help ringing in our ears ; one wants a 
philosophical or statesmanlike demand — just the 
very thing which from the nature of the case w^e 
cannot get. It may be that education will make 
this possible ; but at present education seems 
merely to be a ladder let down into the abyss, 
b}^ which a few stronger natures can climb out of 
it, with horror and contempt in their hearts of 
what they have left behind. The question that 
stares one in the face is, is there honest work for 



The Social Problem 219 

all to do, if all were strong and virtuous ? The 
answer at present seems to be in the negative ; 
and the problem seems to be solved only by the 
fact that all are not capable of honest work, and 
that the weaklings give the strong their oppor- 
tunity. What, again, one asks oneself, is the 
use of contriving more leisure for those who 
could not use it well ? Then, too, under present 
conditions, the survival of the unfittest seems to 
be assured. Those breed most freely and reck- 
lessly of whom it may be said that, for the in- 
terests of civilisation, it is least desirable that 
they should perpetuate their kind. The problem 
too is so complicated, that it requires a gigantic 
faith in a reformer to suggest the sowing of seed 
of which he can never hope to see the fruit. The 
situation is one w^hich tends to develop vehement 
and passionate prophets, dealing in vague and 
remote generalisations, when what one needs is 
practical prudence, and the effective powder of 
foreseeing contingencies. One who like myself 
loves security, leisure, beauty, and peace, and is 
actuated by a vague and benevolent wish that all 
should have the same opportunities as myself, 
feels himself a mere sentimentalist in the matter, 
without a single effective quality. I can see the 



220 The Altar Fire 

problem, I can grieve over it, I can feel mj^ 
faith in God totter under the weight of it, but 
that is all. 

July 15, 1889. 

One of the hardest things to face in the world 
is the grim fact that our power of self- improve- 
ment is limited. Of some qualities we do not 
even possess the germs. Some qualities we have 
in minute quantities, but hardly capable of de- 
velopment ; some few qualities we possess in 
fuller measure, and they are capable of develop- 
ment ; but even so, our total capacity of growth is 
limited, conditioned by our vital energy, and we 
have to face the fact that if we develop one set of 
qualities we must neglect another set. 

I think of it in a whimsical and fantastic image, 
the best I can find. Imagine a box in which 
there are a number of objects like puff-balls, each 
with a certain life of its ow^n, half-filling the box. 
Some of the puff-balls are small, hard, sterile ; 
others are soft and expansive ; some grow quickly 
in warmth and light, others fare better in cold 
and darkness. The process of growth begins : 
some of them increase in size and press them- 
selves into every crevice, enclosing and enfolding 



Development 221 

the others ; even so the growth of the whole mass 
is conditioned by the size of the box, and when 
the box is full, the power of increase is at an end. 

The box, to interpret the fable, is our character 
with its possibilities. The conditions which de- 
velop the various qualities are the conditions of 
our lives, our health, our income, our education, 
the people who surround us ; but even the qual- 
ities themselves have their limitations. Two peo- 
ple maj' grow up under almost precisely similar 
influences, and yet remain different to the end ; 
two characters may be placed in difiicult and 
bracing circumstances ; the effect upon one char- 
acter is to train the quality of self-reliance, on the 
other to produce a moral collapse. Some people 
do their growing early and then stop altogether, 
becoming impervious to new opinions and new in- 
fluences. Some people go on growing to the end. 

If one develops one side of one's nature, as the 
intellectual or artistic, one probably suffers on 
the emotional or moral side. The pain which 
the perceptive man feels in surveying this process 
is apt to be very acute. He may see that he lacks 
certain qualities altogether and yet be unable to 
develop them. He may find in himself some 
patent and even gross fault, and be unable to cure 



222 The Altar Fire 

it. The only hope for any of us is that we do not 
know the expansive force of our qualities, nor the 
size of the box ; and therefore it is reasonable to 
go on trying and desiring ; and as long as one 
can do that, it is clear that there is still room for 
growth. The worst shadow of all is to find, as 
one goes on, a certain indifference creeping over 
one. One accepts a fault as a part of one's 
nature ; one ceases to care about what appears un- 
attainable. 

It may be said that this is a fatalistic theory, 
and leads to a mild inactivity ; but the question 
rather is whether it is true, whether it is attested 
by experience. One improves, not by overlook- 
ing facts, in however generous and enthusiastic 
a spirit, but by facing facts, and making the best 
use one can of them. One must resolutely try to 
submit oneself to favourable conditions, fertilising 
influences. And much more must one do that in 
the case of those for whom one is responsible. 
In the case of my own two children, for instance, 
my one desire is to surround them with the best 
influences I can. Even there one makes mis- 
takes, no doubt, because one cannot test the 
expansive power of their qualities ; but one can 
observe the conditions under which they seem to 



Influences 223 

develop best, and apply them. To lavish love 
and tenderness on some children serves to con- 
centrate their thoughts upon themselves, and 
makes them expect to find all difficulties smoothed 
awa}^ ; on other more generous natures, it pro- 
duces a glow of responsive gratitude and affec- 
tion, a desire to fulfil the hopes formed of them 
by those who love them. The most difficult 
cases of all are the cases of temperaments without 
loyal affection, but with much natural charm. 
Those are the people who get what is called 
" spoilt," because it is so much easier to believe in 
the existence of qualities which are superficially 
displayed than in qualities which lie too deep for 
facile expression. One comes across cases of 
children of intense emotional natures, and very 
little power of expressing their feelings, or of 
showing their affection. Of course, too, example 
is far more potent than precept, and it is very dif- 
ficult for parents to simulate a high-mindedness 
and an affectionateness that they do not them- 
selves possess, even if they are sincerely anxious 
that their children should grow up high-minded 
and affectionate. One of the darkest shadows of 
my present condition is the fear that any revelation 
of my own weakness and emptiness may discourage 



2 24 The Altar Fire 

and distort my children's characters ; and the 
watchfulness which this requires increases the 
strain under which I suffer, because it is a hard 
fact that an example set for a noble and an 
unselfish motive is not nearly so potent as an 
example set naturally, sweetly, and generously, 
with no particular consciousness of motive behind 
it at all. 

July 1 8, 1889. 
I have just heard of the sudden death of an old 
friend. Francis Willett was a writer of .some dis- 
tinction, whose acquaintance I made in my first 
years in lyondon. He was a tall, slim man, dark 
of complexion, who would have been called very 
handsome, if it had not been for a rather bur- 
dened air that he wore. As it was, people tended 
rather to pity him, and to speak of him as some- 
what of a mystery. I never knew anything 
about the background of his life. He must have 
had some small means of his own, and he lived 
in rooms, in rather an out-of-the-way street near 
Regent's Park. One used to see him occasionally 
in London, walking rapidly, almost always alone, 
and very rarely I encountered him at parties, 
always wearing a slightly regretful air, as though 



Francis Willett 225 

he were wishing himself a wa3\ He wrote a good 
deal, reviewed books, and, I suppose, contrived to 
make enough to live on by his pen. He once 
spoke of himself as being in the happy position 
of being able to exist without writing, but forced 
to purchase all small luxuries by w^ork. He pub- 
lished two or three books of short stories and 
sketches of travel, delicate pieces of work, which 
had no great sale, but gave him a recognised 
position among men of letters. I drifted into a 
kind of friendship with him ; we were members 
of the same club, and he sometimes used to 
flutter shyly into my rooms like a great moth ; 
but he never asked me to his quarters. 

I discovered that he had done well at Oxford, 
and also that he had once, at all events, had 
numerous ambitions ; but his health was not strong, 
he was extremely sensitive, and very fastidious 
about the quality of his work. I realised this on 
an occasion when he once entrusted me with a 
MS., and asked me if I would give him an opin- 
ion, as it was an experiment, and he did not feel 
sure of his ground ; he added that there was no 
hurry about it. I put the MS. away in a despatch - 
box, and having at the time a press of work, I 
forgot about it. He never asked me for it, and 
15 



2 26 The Altar Fire 

I did not happen to open the box where it 
lay. Some months after I came upon it. I read 
it through, and thought it a fine and delicate 
piece of work. I wrote to him, apologising for 
my delay and speaking warmly of the piece, 
which was one of those rather uncomfortable sto- 
ries, which is not quite long enough to make a 
book, and yet rather too long to put in a volume 
with other pieces. He wrote at once, thanking 
me for my opinion, and it was only by accident 
at a later date, when I happened to ask him what 
he was doing with the story, that he told me he 
had destroyed it. I expressed deep regret that he 
had done so ; and he said with a smile that it was 
probably rather a foolish impulse that had decided 
him to make away with it. "The fact is," he 
said, " that you wrote very kindly about it, but 
you had had it in your hands so long, that I felt 
somehow that it could not have interested you — 
it really doesn't matter," he added, "I don't 
think it was at all successful. ' ' I apologised very 
humbly, and explained the circumstances. ' ' Oh, 
please don't blame yourself in any way," he said, 
" I have not the least shadow of resentment 
in my mind about it. There is something 
wrong about my work; it does n't interest peo- 



Francis Willett 227 

pie. I suppose it is that I can't let myself go." 
An interesting conversation followed, and lie told 
me more than he ever told me before or since 
about himself. He confessed to being so critical 
of his own work, that his table-drawers were full 
of unfinished MSS. His usual experience was 
to begin a piece of work enthusiasticall}^ ; to plan 
it all out, and to work at first with zest. * ' Then 
it begins to get all out of shape," he said, " there 
is no go about it ; it all loses itself in subtleties 
and complexities of motive ; one thing trips up 
another, and at last it all gets so tangled that I 
put it aside ; if I could follow the track of one 
strong and definite emotion, it would be all right 
— but I am like the man in the story who changes 
the cow for the horse, and the horse for the pig, 
and the pig for the grindstone ; and then the 
grindstone rolls into the river." He seemed to 
take it all very philosophically, and I ventured to 
say so. " Yes," he said, " I have learnt at last 
that that is how I am made ; but I have been 
through a good many agonies of disgust and dis- 
couragement about it in old days — it is the same 
with everything that I have touched. The bits 
of work that I have completed have all been done 
in a rush — if the mood lasts long enough, I am 



228 The Altar Fire 

all right — and once or twice it has just lasted. 
I am like a swimmer," he went on, " who can 
only swim a certain distance ; and if I judge the 
distance rightly, 1 can reach the point I desire to 
reach ; but I generally judge the distance wrong ; 
and half-way across I am seized with a sudden 
fright and struggle back in terror." 

By one of the strange coincidences that some- 
times happen in this world, I took an unknown 
lady in to dinner a few days afterwards, and 
happened to mention Willett's name. " Do you 
know him ? " she said. " Oh yes, of course you 

do ! " she went on ; ' ' you are the Mr. S of 

whom he has spoken to me." I found that my 
neighbour was a distant relation of Willett's, and 
she told me a good deal about him. He was 
absolutely alone in the world ; he had been left 
an orphan at an earlj^ age, and had spent his holi- 
days with guardians and relations, with any one 
who would take pity on him. " He was a clever 
kind of boy," she said, * * melancholy and diffident, 
always thinking that people disliked him. He 
used to give me the air of a person who was try- 
ing to find something, and who did not quite 
know where to look for it. He had a time of ex- 
pansion at Oxford, where he made friends and did 



Francis Willett 229 

well ; and then he came to London, and began 
to write. But the real tragedy of his life is this, ' ' 
she said. " He really fell in love, or as nearly 
as he could, with a very pretty and high-spirited 
girl, who took a great fancy to him, and pitied 
him from the bottom of her heart. For five years 
the thing went on. She would have married 
him at any time if he had asked her. But he 
did not. I suppose he could not face the idea of 
being mamed. He always seemed to be on the 
point of proposing to her, and then he would lose 
heart at the last minute. At last she got tired of 
waiting, and, I suppose, began to care for some 
one else ; but she was very good to Francis, 
and never lost patience with him. At last she 
told him one day quietly that she was engaged, 
and hoped that they would always remain friends. 
I think, do you know, that it was almost a relief 
to him than otherwise. I did my best to help 
him — marriage was the one thing he wanted ; if 
he could only have been pushed into it, he would 
have made a perfect husband, because not only 
is he very much of a gentleman, but he could 
never bear to fail any one who depended on him ; 
but he has got the unhappiest mind I know ; the 
moment that he has formed a plan, and sees his 



230 The Altar Fire 

way dear, he at once begins to think of all the 
reasons against it — not the selfish reasons, by any 
means ; in this case he reflected, I am sure, how 
little he had to offer ; he could not bring himself 
to feel that any one could really care for him ; 
and then, too, he never really cared for anything 
quite enough himself. Or if he did, he found all 
sorts of refined reasons why he ought not to do 
so. If only he had been a little more selfish, it 
would have been all right. Indeed," said Mrs. 

T , with a smile, "he is the only person of 

whom I could truthfully say that if he had only 
been a little more vulgar, he would have been a 
much happier person." 

I saw a good deal of Willett after that, and 
he interested me increasingly. I verified Mrs. 

T 's judgment about him, and found it true in 

every particular. I suppose there was some lack 
of vitality about him, because the more I knew of 
him the more I found to admire. He was an 
exquisitely delicate person, affectionate, respon- 
sive, with a fine sense of humour — indeed, the 
most disconcerting thing was that he saw to the 
full the humour of his own position. But none 
of the robust motives that spur men to action 
affected him. He was ambitious, but he would 



Francis Willett 231 

not make any sacrifices to gain the objects of his 
ambition. He could not use his powers on con- 
ventional lines. He was, I think, deeply desirous 
of confidence and ajQfection, but he could never 
believe that he deserved either, or that it was 
possible for him to be interesting to others. He 
was laborious, pure-minded, transparently honest, 
and had a shrewd and penetrating judgment of 
other people ; but he seemed to labour under a 
sense of shame at his deficiencies, and to feel that 
he had no claims or rights in the world. He 
existed on sufferance. The smallest shadow of 
disapproval caused him to abandon any design, 
not resentfully but eagerly, as though he was 
fully aware of his own incompetence. 

I grew to feel a strong affection for him, and 
tried in many ways to help and encourage him. 
But he always discounted encouragement, and it 
is a clumsy business trying to help a man w^ho 
does not demand or desire help. 

He seemed to me to have schooled himself into 
a kind of tender patience ; and this attitude, I am 
ashamed to say, used to irritate me considerably, 
because it seemed to me to be so much power 
wasted on accepting defeat, which might have 
ensured victory. 



232 The Altar Fire 

He was with me a few weeks ago. I was up 
in town, and he dined with me b)^ appointment. 
He told me, with a gentle philosophy, a vStory 
which made my blood boil. He had been asked 
to write a book by a publisher, and the lines had 
been laid down for him. " It was such a comfort 
to me," he said, "because it supplied just the 
stimulus I could not myself originate. My book 
was really rather a good piece of work ; but a 
week ago I sent it to the publisher, and he re- 
turned it, saying it was not the least what he 
wanted — he suggested my retaining about a third 
of it, and rewriting the rest. Of course I could 
do nothing of the kind. " " What have you done 
with it ? " I asked. " Oh, I have destroyed it." 
" But did n't you see him," I said, " or do some- 
thing — or at all events insist on payment ? ' ' 
**0h no," he said, "I could not do that — the 
man was probably right — he wanted a particular 
kind of book, and mine was not what he wanted. 
I did say that I wished he had explained to me 
more clearly what he wanted— but after all it 
does n't very much matter. I can get along all 
right, if I am careful." 

" Well," I said, " you are really a very aggra- 
vating person. If I could not have got my book 



Francis Willett 233 

published elsewhere, I would certainly have had 
a row— I w^ould have taken out my money's 
worth in vituperation." 

Willett smiled ; '' I dare say you w^ould have 
had some fun," he said, ''but that is not my 
line. I have told you before that I can't interest 
people — I don't think it is wholly my fault." 

We sat late, talking ; and for the only time in 
his life he spoke to me, with a depth of emotion 
of which I should hardly have suspected him, of 
the value he set upon my friendship, and his 
gratitude for my sympathy. 

And now this morning I have heard of his 
sudden death. He was found dead in his room, 
bent over his papers. He must have been writing 
late at night, as his custom was : and it proved 
on examination that he must have long suffered 
from an unsuspected disease of the heart. Per- 
haps that may explain his failure, if it can be 
called a failure. There is something to me almost 
insupportably pathetic to think of his lonely and 
uncomforted life, his isolation, his sensitiveness. 
And yet I do not feel sure that it is pathetic, 
because his life somehow seems to me to have 
been one of the most beautiful I have ever known. 
He did nothing much for others, he achieved 



234 The Altar Fire 

nothing for himself; but it is only our miserable 
habit of weighing every one's life, in a hard way, 
by a standard of performance and success, which 
makes one sigh over Francis Willett's life. It is 
very difficult at times to see what it is that life is 
exactly meant to do for us. Most of the men and 
women I know — I say this sadly but frankly — 
seem to me to leave the world worse, in essential 
respects, than they entered it. There is generally 
something ingenuous, responsive, eager, sweet, 
hopeful about a child — but though I admit that 
one does encounter beautiful natures that seem to 
flower very generously in the light of experience, 
yet most people grow dull, dreary, conventional, 
grasping, commonplace — they grow to think 
rather contemptuously of emotion and generosity 
— they think it weak to be amiable, unselfish, 
kind. They become fond of comfort and position 
and respect and money. They think such things 
the serious concerns of life, and sentiment a kind 
of relaxation. But with Willett it was the precise 
reverse. He claimed nothing for himself, he 
never profited at the expense of another ; he was 
utterly humble, gentle, unpretentious, kind, sin- 
cere. An hour ago I should have called him 
''poor fellow," and wished that he had had a 



Francis Willett 235 

more robust kind of fibre ; now that I know he is 
dead, I cannot find it in my heart to wish him 
any such qualities. His life appears to me utterly 
beautiful and fragrant. He never incurred any 
taint of grossness from prosperity or success ; he 
never grew indifferent or hard ; and in the light 
of his last passage, such a failure seems the one 
thing worth achieving, and to carry with it a 
hope all alive and rich with possibilities of 
blessing and glory. He would hardly have 
called himself a Christian, I think ; he would 
have said that he could not have attained to any- 
thing like a vital faith or a hopeful certainty ; 
but the only words and thoughts that haunt my 
mind about him, echoing sweetly and softly 
through the ages, are the words in which Christ 
described the tender spirits of those who were 
nearest to the Father's heart, and to whom it is 
given to see God. 

July 2^, 1889. 
Health of body and mind return to me, 
slowly but surel3^ I have given up all attempt 
at writing ; I rack my brain no longer for plots 
or situations. I keep, it is true, my note-book 
for subjects beside me, and occasionally jot down 



236 The Altar Fire 

a point ; but I feel entirely indifferent to the 
whole thing. Meanwhile the flood of letters 
about my book, invitations from editors, offers 
from publishers, continues to flow. I reply to 
these benignantly and courteously, but undertake 
nothing, promise nothing. I seem to have re- 
covered my balance. I think no more about my 
bodily complaints, and my nerves no longer sting 
and thrill. The day is hardly long enough for 
all I have to do. It may be that when the novelty 
of the experiment in education wears off, I shall 
begin to hanker after authorship again. Alec 
will have to go to school in a j^ear or two, I sup- 
pose ; but it shall be a day-school at first, if I can 
find one. As to the question of public school, I 
am much exercised. Of course there are night- 
mare terrors about tone and morals ; but I am not 
really very anxious about the boy, because he is 
sensible and independent, and has no lack of 
moral courage. The vigorous barrack-life is 
good for a boy, the give-and-take, the splendid 
equality, the manly code, the absence of affecta- 
tion. But the intellectual tone of schools is low, 
and the conventionality is great. I don't want 
Alec to be a conventional man, and yet I want 
him to accept current conventions instinctively 



The Public-School Type 237 

about matters of indiSerence. I have a horror 
of the sportmg public-school type, the good- 
humoured, robust fellow, who does his work and 
fills his spare time with games, and thinks intel- 
lectual things, and artistic interests, and emotion, 
and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people 
live a wholesome enough life ; they make good 
soldiers, good officials, good men of business. But 
they are woefully complacent and self-satis- 
fied. The schools develop a Spartan type, and I 
want Alec to be an Athenian. But the experi- 
ment will have to be made, because a man is at 
a disadvantage in ordinary life if he has not the 
public school bojihomie, courtesy, and common 
sense. I must try to keep the other side alive, 
and I don't despair of doing it. 

Meantime we are a very contented household, 
in spite of the fact that now, if ever, is the time 
for me to make my mark as a writer, and I have 
to pass all the opportunities that offer. On the 
other hand, this is the point at which one sees, 
in the history of letters, so many writers go to 
pieces. They suddenly find, after their first 
great success, that they have arrived, by a tortu- 
ous and secret path, at being a sort of public 
man. They are dazzled by contact with the 



238 The Altar Fire 

world. They go into society, they make 
speeches, they write twaddle, they drain their 
energy, already depleted by creation, in fifty dif- 
ferent ways. Now I am strongly of Ruskin's 
opinion that the duty of the artist is to make 
himself fit for the best society, and then to ab- 
stain from it. Very fortunately I have no sort of 
taste for these things, beyond the simple human 
satisfaction of enjoying consideration. That is 
natural and inevitable. But I don't value it 
unduly, and I dislike its penalties imore than 
I love its rewards. 

And then, too, I reflect that it is, after all, life 
that we are here to taste, and life that so many of 
us pass by. Work is a part of life, perhaps the 
essence of life ; but to be absorbed in work is to 
be like a man who is absorbed in collecting speci- 
mens, and never has time to sort them. I knew 
of a man who determined, early in life, to write 
the history of political institutions. He had a 
great library, and he devoted himself to study. 
He put in his books, as he read them, slips of 
paper to indicate passages and chapters that he 
would have to consult, and as he finished with 
a book, he put it in a certain place on a certain 
shelf. He made no other notes or references — 



The Lesson of Life 239 

he was a man with a colossal memory, and he 
knew exactly what his markers meant. In the 
middle of this life of acquisition, while he bored 
like a worm in a cheese, he died. His library 
was sold. The markers meant nothing to any 
one else ; and the book-buyers merely took the 
markers out and threw them away, and that was 
the end of the history of political institutions. 

I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to 
try and arrive at some solution, to draw some 
sort of conclusions — to reflect, to theorise ; we 
may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only 
hope of doing so, the only hope that humanity 
will do so, is for some at least to tr3\ And thus 
I think that I have perhaps been saved from a 
great delusion. I was spending my time in spin- 
ning romances, in elaborating plots, in manoeuv- 
ring life as I would ; and it is not like that. Life 
is not run on physical lines, nor on emotional, 
nor social, nor even moral lines. It is not man- 
aged in the least as we should manage it ; it is a 
resultant of innumerable forces, or perhaps the 
same force running in intricate currents. Of 
course the strange thing is that we men should 
find ourselves thrust into it, w^ith strong intui- 
tions, vehement preconceptions, as to how it 



240 The Altar Fire 

ought to be directed ; our happiness seems to 
depend upon our being, or learning to be, in 
harmon}^ with it, but it baffles us, it resists us, it 
contradicts us, it opposes us to the end ; some- 
times it crushes us ; and yet we beUeve that it 
means good ; and even if we do not so believe, 
we have to acquiesce, we have to endure ; and 
one thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson 
of life by practising indifference or stoical forti- 
tude, or by abandoning ourselves to despair ; onl}^ 
by believing that our sufferings are fruitful, our 
mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sor- 
rows gracious, can we hope to triumph. We go 
on, many of us, relying on useless defences, 
beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions, 
overlooking, as far as we can, stem realities ; 
stopping our ears, turning away our gaze, shrink- 
ing and crying out like children at the prospect 
of experiences to which we are led by loving 
presences, that smile as they draw us to the 
wholesome and bracing incidents that we so 
weakly dread. We pray for courage, but we 
know in our souls that courage can only be won 
by enduring what we fear ; and thus preoccupied 
by hopes and plans and fears, we miss the whole- 
some, sweet and simple stuff of life, its quiet re- 



A Flash of Insight 241 

lationsliips, its tranquil occupations, its beautiful 
and tender surprises. 

And then perhaps, at long intervals, we have a 
deep and splendid flash of insight, when we can 
thank God that things have not been as we 
should have willed and ordered them. We 
should have lingered, perhaps, in the low rich 
meadows, the sheltered woodlands of our desire ; 
we should never have set our feet to the hill. In 
terror and reluctance we have wandered upwards 
among the steep mountain tracks, by high green 
slopes, by grim crag-buttresses, through fields of 
desolate stones. Yet we are aware of a finer, 
purer air, of wide prospects of hill and plain ; we 
feel that we have gained in strength and vigour, 
that our perceptions are keener, our very enjoy- 
ment nobler ; and at last, it may be, we have 
sight, from some Pisgah-top of hope, of fairer 
lands yet to which we are surely bound. And 
then, too, though we have fared on in loneliness 
and isolation, we see moving forms of friends and 
comrades converging on our track. It is no 
dream ; it is but a parable of what has happened 
to man}^ a soul, what is daily happening. What 
does the sad, stained, weary, fitful past concern 
us at such a moment as this ? It concerns us 



2 42 The Altar Fire 

nothing, save that only through its pains and 
shadows was it possible for us to climb where we 
have climbed. 

To-day it seems that I have been blessed with 
such a vision. The mist will close in again, 
doubtless, wild with wind, chill with rain, sad 
with the cry of hoarse streams. But I have 
seen ! I shall be weary and regretful and de- 
spairing many times ; but I shall never wholly 
doubt again. 

August 8, 1889. 
Alec is ill to-day. He w^as restless, flushed, 
feverish, yesterday evening, and I thought he 
must have caught cold ; we put him to bed, and 
this morning we sent for the doctor. He says 
there is no need for anxiety, but he does not 
know as yet what is the matter ; his temperature 
is high, and we must just keep him quietly in 
bed, and wait. I tell myself that it is foolish to 
be anxious, but I cannot keep a certain dread out 
of my mind ; there is a weight upon my heart, 
which seems unduly heavy. Perhaps it is only 
that it seems unusual, for he has never had an 
illness of any kind. He is not to be disturbed, 
and Maggie is not allowed to see him. Maud 



A Shadow of Fear 243 

sate with him this morning, and he slept most of 
the time. I looked in once or twice, but people 
coming and going tend to make him restless. 
Maud herself is a marvel to me. She must be 
even more anxious than I am, but she is serene, 
smiling, strong, with a cheerfulness that has no 
effort about it. She laughed tenderly at my fears, 
and sent me out for a walk with Maggie. I fear 
I was a gloomy companion. In the evening I 
went to sit with Alec a little. He was wakeful, 
large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of 
stories from Homer, of which he is very fond, 
in one hand, the other clasping his black kitten, 
which slept peacefully on the counterpane. He 
wanted to talk, but to keep him quiet I told him 
a long trivial story, full of unexciting incidents. 
He lay musing, his head on his hand ; then he 
seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside him, 
watching and wondering at the nearness and the 
dearness of the child to me, almost amazed at 
the revelation which this shadow of fear gives me 
of the place which he fills in my heart and life. 
He tossed about for some time, and when I asked 
him if he wanted anything, he only put his hand 
in mine ; a gesture not quite like him, as he is a 
boy who is averse to personal caresses or signs of 



244 The Altar Fire 

emotion. So I drew my chair up to the bed, and 
sate there with the little hot hand in my own. 
Maud came up presently ; but as he now seemed 
sound asleep, we left him in the care of the old 
nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only 
knew what was the matter ! I argue with myself 
how much unnecessary misery I give myself by 
anticipating evil ; but I cannot help it ; and the 
weight on my mind grew heavier ; half the night 
I lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I 
fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled 
from me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning 
hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a 
beast leaping upon its prey. 

August II, 1889. 
I cannot and dare not write of these days. The 
child is very ill ; it is some obscure inflammation 
of the brain- tissue. I had an insupportable fear 
that it might have resulted in some way from 
being over-pressed in the matter of work, over- 
stimulated. I asked the doctor. If he lied to 
me, and I do not think he did, he lied like a man, 
or an angel. " Not in the least," he said, " it is 
a constitutional thing ; in fact, I may say that the 
rational and healthy life the child has lived will 



Alec's Illness 245 

help more than anything to pull him through." 
But I can't write of the days. I sleep, half- 
conscious of my misery. I suppose I eat, walk, 
read. But waking is like the waking of a prisoner 
who wakes up to be put on the rack, who hears 
doors open and feet approach, and sickens with 
dread as he lies. God's hand is heavy upon me 
day and night. Surely nothing, in the world or 
out of it, can obliterate the memory of this 
suffering ; perhaps, if Alec is given back to us, 
I shall smile at this time of suffering. But, if 
not 

August 12, 1889. 
He is losing ground, he is hardly ever con- 
scious now ; he sleeps a good deal, but often he 
talks quietly to himself of all that we have done 
and said ; he often supposes himself to be with 
me, and, thank God, he never says a word to 
show that he has ever feared or misunderstood 
me. I could not bear that. Yesterday when I 
was with him, he opened his eyes on me ; I could 
see that he knew me, and that he was frightened. 
I could not speak, but Maud, who was with me, 
just took his hand and with her own tranquil 
smile, said , " It is all right. Alec ; there is nothing 



246 The Altar Fire 

to be frightened about ; we are here, and you 
will soon be well again." The child closed his 
eyes and lay smiling to himself. I could not 
have done that. 

August 13, 1889. 
He died this morning, just at the dawn. I 
knew last night that all hope was over. I was 
with him half the night, and prayed, knowing 
my prayers were in vain; that I could save him 
no suffering, could not keep him, could not draw 
him back. Maud took my place at midnight ; I 
slept, and in the grey dawn, I woke to find her 
standing with a candle by my bed ; I knew in a 
moment, by a glance, that the end was near. No 
word passed between us ; I found Maggie by the 
bed ; and we three together waited for the end. 
I had never seen any one die. He was quite 
unconscious, breathing slowly, looking just like 
himself, as though flushed with slumber. At last 
he stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle 
himself for the last sleep. I do not know when 
he died, but I became aware that life had passed, 
and that the little spirit that we loved had fled, 
God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand 
in mine; and in my dumb and frozen grief, 



My Son, My Son 247 

almost without a thought of anything but a deep 
and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the 
maker of love and death alike, I became aware 
that both she and Maud had me in their thoughts, 
that my sorrow was even more to them than their 
own — while I was cut oflf from them ; from life 
and hope alike, in a place of darkness and in the 
deep. 

August 19, 1889. 
I saw Alec no more ; I would remember him 
as he was in life, not the stiffened waxen mask 
of my beloved. The days passed in a dull stupor 
of grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly 
greyness. And I who thought that I had sounded 
the depths of pain ! I could not realise it, could 
not believe that all would not somehow be as 
before. Maud and Maggie speak of him to each 
other and to me ... it is inconceivable. With 
a dull heartache I have collected and put away 
all the child's things — his books, his toys, his 
little possessions. I followed the little coffin to 
the grave. The uncontrollable throb of emotion 
came over me at the words, " I am the resur- 
rection and the life." It was a grey, gusty day; 
a silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great 



248 The Altar Fire 

churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found 
myself watching idly how the clergyman's hood 
was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into 
the deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying 
there, all in a dumb dream. The holy words 
fell vacuously on my ears. *' Man walketh in a 
vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain " — 
that was all I felt. I seem to believe nothing, to 
hope nothing. I do not believe I shall ever see 
or draw near to the child again, and yet the 
thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, lies 
cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me; 
her love does not seem to suffer eclipse ; she does 
everything, she smiles, she speaks ; she feels, she 
says, the presence of the child near her and about 
her ; that means nothing to me ; the soul appears 
to me to have gone out utterly like a blown 
flame, mingling with the unseen life, as the little 
body we loved will be mingled with the dust. 

I cannot say that I endure agony ; it is rather 
as if I had received a blow so fierce that it drove 
sensation away ; I seem to see the bruise, watch 
the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. 
The suffering will come, I doubt not ; but mean- 
while I am only mutely grateful that I do not 
feel more, suffer more. It does not even seem to 



Bereavement 249 

me to have drawn me nearer to Maud, to Maggie ; 
my power of loving seems extinguished, like 
my power of suffering. I do not know why I 
write in this book, why I record my blank apathy. 
It is a habit, it passes the time ; the only 
thing that gives me any comfort is the thought 
that I shall die, too, and close my eyes at last 
upon this terrible world, made so sweet and 
beautiful, and then slashed and scored across 
with such cruel stripes, where we pay so grievous 
a penalty for feeling and loving. Tennyson found 
consolation "when he sorrowed most." But I 
say deliberately that I would rather not have 
loved my child than lose him thus. 

August 28, 1889. 

We are to go away. Maggie droops like a 
faded flower, and for the first time I realise, in 
trying to comfort and distract her, that I have 
not lost everj^thing. We are much together, and 
seeing her thus pine and fade stirs a dread, in the 
heart that has been so cold, that I may lose her, 
too. At last we are drawn together. She came 
to say good-night to me last night, and a gush of 
love passed through me, like the wind stirring 
the strings of a harp to music. * ' My precious 



250 The Altar Fire 

darling, my comfort," I said ; the words put, it 
seemed, on my lips, by some deeper power. She 
clung to me, crying softly. Yet, is it strange to 
say it, that simple utterance seems almost to have 
revived her, to have given her pride and courage ? 
But Maud is still almost a mystery to me. Who 
can tell how she suffers — I cannot — it seems to 
have quickened and enriched her love and tender- 
ness ; she seems to have a secret that I cannot 
come near to sharing ; she does not repine, rebel, 
resist ; she lives in some region of unapproachable 
patience and love. She goes daily to the grave, 
but I cannot visit it or think of it. The sight 
of the church-tower on my walks gives me a throb 
of dismay. But now we are going away. We 
have been lent a little house in a quiet seaside 
place ; I suppose I am ill— at least, I am aware 
of a deep and unutterable fatigue at times, when 
I can rouse myself to nothing, but sit unoccupied, 
musing, glad to be alone, and only dreading the 
slightest interruption, the smallest duty. I know 
by some subtle sense that I am seldom absent 
from Maud's thoughts ; but, with her incredible 
courage and patience, she betrays nothing by 
word or glance. She is absolutely patient, entirely 
self-forgetful ; she quietly relieves me of any- 



Old Haunts 251 

thing I have to do ; she alters arrangements a 
dozen times a day, with a ready smile ; and yet 
it almost seems to me as if I had lost her, too. 

August 30, 1889. 
Our route lay through Cambridge ; we had to 
change there and wait ; so we drove down to the 
town to look at my old college. There it lay, the 
charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking lazily out 
of its deep-set barred windows in the bright sun, 
just the same, it seemed, as ever, though perhaps 
a touch more mellow and more settled ; every 
corner and staircase haunted with old ghosts for 
me. I could put a name to every set of rooms, 
flash an incident to every door and window. In 
my heavy, apathetic mood the memory of my life 
there seemed like a memory of some one else, 
moving in golden light, talking and laughing in 
firelit rooms, lingering in moonlit nights by the 
bridge, wondering what life was going to bring. 
It seemed like turning the pages of some old il- 
luminated book with bright pictures, where the 
very sunlight is the purest and stiffest gold. The 
men I knew, the friends I lived with, admired, 
loved — where are they ? scattered to all parts of 
the earth, parted utterly from me, some of them 



252 The Altar Fire 

dead, alas ! and silent. It came over me with a 
thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had pictured 
Alec here, living the same free and beautiful life, 
tasting the same innocent pleasures, with the 
bright, sweet world opening upon him. In that 
calm, sunn}' afternoon, life seemed a strange 
phantasmal business, and I myself a revenant 
from some thin, unsubstantial world. A door 
opened, and an old Don, well known to me in 
those days, hardly altered, it seemed, came out 
and trotted across the court, looking suspiciously 
to left and right as he used to do. Had he been 
doing the same thing ever since, reading the 
same books, talking the same innocent gossip ? I 
had not the heart to greet him, and he passed 
me by unrecognising. We peeped into the hall 
through the screen. I could see where I used to 
sit, the same dark pictures looking down. We 
went to the chapel, with its noble classical wood- 
work, the great carved panels, the angels' heads, 
the huge, stately reredos. Some one, thank God, 
was playing softly on the organ, and we sate to 
listen. The sweet music flowed over my sad 
heart in a healing tide. Yes, it was not mean- 
ingless, after all, this strange life, with the 
good years shining in their rainbow halo, even 



The Burden Falls 253 

though the path led into darkness and form- 
less shadow. I seemed to look back on it all, as 
the traveller on the hill looks out from the 
skirts of cloud upon the sunny valley beneath 
him. It all worked together, said the delicate 
rising strain, outlining itself above the soft 
thunder of the pedals, into something high and 
grave and beautiful ; it all ended in the peace of 
God. I sate there, with wife and child, a pilgrim 
faring onwards, tasting of love and life and sor- 
row, weary of the way, but still — yes, I could 
say that — still hopeful. In that moment even 
my bitter loss had something beautiful about it. 
It was there, the bright episode of my dear Alec's 
life, the memory of the beloved years together. 
Maggie, seeing something in my face that she 
was glad to see, put her hand in mine, and the 
tears rose to my eyes, while I smiled at Maud ; 
the burden fell off my shoulder for a moment, and 
something seemed as it were to touch me and 
point onwards. The music with a dying fall 
came to a soft close ; the rich light fell on desk 
and canopy ; the old tombs glimmered in the 
dusty air. We went out in silence ; and then 
there came back to me, in the old dark court, with 
its ivied corners, its trim grass plots, the sense that 



254 The Altar Fire 

I was still a part of it all, that the old life was not 
dead, but stored up like a garnered treasure in 
the rich and guarded past. Not by detachment 
or aloofness from happiness and warmth and life 
are our victories won. That had been the dark 
temptation, the shadow of my loss, to believe that 
in so sad and strange an existence the only hope 
was to stand apart from it all, not to care too 
much, not to love too closely. That was false, 
utterly false ; a bare and grim philosophy, a 
timid sauntering. Rather it was better to clasp 
all things close, to love passionately, to desire in- 
finitely, to yield oneself gladly and joyfully to 
every deep and true emotion ; not greedily and 
luxuriously, flinging aside the crumpled husk 
that had given up its sweetness ; but tenderly and 
gently, holding out one's arms to everything pure 
and noble, trusting that behind all there did in- 
deed beat a great and fatherly heart, that loved 
one better than one dreamed. 

That was a strange experience, that sunlit 
afternoon, a mingling of deepest pain and softest 
hope, a touch of fire from the very altar of faith, 
linking the beautiful past with the dark present, 
and showing me that the future held a promise 
of perfect graciousness and radiant strength. 



Hope 255 

Did other lives hold the same rich secrets ? I felt 
that they did ; for that day, at least, all mankind, 
young and old alike, seemed indeed my brothers 
and sisters. In the young men that went lightly 
in and out, finding life so full of zest, thinking 
each other so interesting and wonderful ; in the 
tired face of the old Professor, limping along 
the street ; in the prosperous, comfortable con- 
tentment of robust men, full of little affairs and 
schemes — I saw in all of them the same hope, 
the same unity of purpose, the same significance ; 
and we three in the midst, united by love and 
loss alike, we were at the centre, as it were, of a 
great drama of life and love, in which even death 
could only shift the scene and enrich the intensity 
of the secret hope. 

September 5, 1889. 
The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away 
from Cambridge could not last ; I did not hope 
that it could. We have had a dark and sad time, 
yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we 
have realised how closely we are drawn together, 
how much we depend on each other. Maud's 
brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly ; 
and this has done more than anything to bring us 



256 The Altar Fire 

nearer, because I have felt the stronger, realising 
how much vShe leant upon me. She has been 
filled with self-reproach, I know not for what 
shadowy causes. She blames herself for a thou- 
sand things, for not having been more to Alec, for 
having followed her own interests and activities, 
for not having understood him better. It is all 
unreal, morbid, overstrained, of course, but none 
the less terribly there. I have tried to persuade 
her that it is but weariness and grief trying to 
attach itself to definite causes, but she cannot be 
comforted. Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive, 
read, and talk together — mostly of him, for I can 
do that now ; we can even smile together over 
little memories, though it is perilous walking, 
and a step brings us to the verge of tears. But, 
thank God, there is not a single painful memory, 
not a thing we would have had otherwise in the 
whole of that little beautiful life ; and I wonder 
now wretchedly, whether its very beauty and 
brightness ought not to have prepared me more to 
lose him ; it was too good to be true, too perfectly 
pure and brave. Yet I never even dreamed that 
he would leave us ; I should have treasured the 
bright days better if I had. There are times of 
sharpest sorrow ; days when I wake and have 



Love and Grief 257 

forgotten ; when I think of him as with us, and 
then the horror of my loss comes curdling and 
weltering back upon me ; when I thrill from 
head to foot with hopeless agony, rebelling, de- 
siring, hating the death that parts us. 

Maggie seems to feel it differently. A child 
accepts a changed condition with perhaps a 
sharper pang, but with a swift accustoming to 
what irreparably is. She weeps at the thought 
of him sometimes, but without the bitter re- 
sistance, the futile despair which makes me 
agonise. That she can be interested, distracted, 
amused, is a great help to me ; but nothing seems 
to minister to my dear Maud, except the impas- 
sioned revival, for it is so, of our earliest first 
love. It has come back to bless us, that deep 
and intimate absorption that had moved into a 
gentler comradeship. The old mysterious yearn- 
ing to mingle life and dreams, and almost 
identities, has returned in fullest force ; the years 
have rolled away, and in the loss of her 
calm strength and patience, we are as lovers 
again. The touch of her hand, the glance of her 
eye, thrill through me as of old. It is a devout 
service, an eager anticipation of her lightest wish 
that possesses me. I am no longer tended ; I 



258 The Altar Fire 

tend and serve. There is something soft, appeal- 
ing, wistful about her that seems to give her 
back an almost childlike dependence, till mj^ 
grief almost goes from me in joy that I can sus- 
tain and aid her. 

September 7, 1889. 
Another trouble has fallen upon us. I have 
had a very grievous letter from my cousin, who 
succeeded by arrangement, on my father's death, 
to the business. He has been unfortunate in his 
affairs ; he has thrown money away in speculation. 
The greater part of my income came from the 
business. I suppose the arrangement was a bad 
one, but the practice was so sound and secure in 
my father's life that it never occurred to me to 
doubt its stability. The chief part of my income, 
some nine hundred a year, came to me from this 
source. Apart from that, I have some three or 
four hundred from invested money of my own, 
and Maud has upwards of two hundred a year. I 

am going off to-morrow to L to meet vny 

cousin, and go into the matter. I don't at present 
understand how things are. His letter is full of 
protestations and self-recrimination. We can live, 
I suppose, if the worst comes to the worst, but in 



Business Troubles 259 

a very different wa}-. Perhaps we may even 
have to sell our pleasant house. The strange 
thing is that I don't feel this all more acutely, 
but I seem to have lost the power of suf- 
fering for any other reason than because Alec 
is dead. 

September 12, 1889. 

I have come back to-night from some weary 
nightmare days with my poor cousin. The thing 
is as bad as it can be. The business will be ac- 
quired by Messrs. F , the next most leading 

solicitors. With the price they will give, and 
with the sacrifice of my cousin's savings, and 
the assets of the firm, the money can just be 
paid. We shall have some six hundred a year to 
live upon ; my cousin is to enter the office of the 

F firm as an ordinary clerk. The origin of 

the disaster is a melancholy one ; it was not that 
he himself might profit, but to increase the in- 
come of some clients who had lost money and de- 
sired a higher rate of interest for funds left in the 
hands of the firm. If my cousin had resisted the 
demand, there would have been some unpleasant- 
ness, because the money lost had been invested 
on his advice ; he could not face this, and pro- 



26o The Altar Fire 

ceeded to speculate with other money, of which 
he was trustee, to fill the gap. Good- nature, im- 
prudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the 
conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, 
have been the cause of his ruin. It is a fearful 
blow to him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in be- 
ing unmarried ; I have urged him to try and get 
employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing 
the situation in the place where he is known, 
with a fantastic idea, which is at the same time 
noble and chivalrous, of doing penance. Of 
course he has no prospects whatever ; but I am 
sure of this, that he grieves over my lost in- 
heritance far more than he grieves over his own 
ruin. His great misery is that some years ago 

he refused an offer from Messrs. F to 

amalgamate the two firms. 

I feared at first that I might have to sacrifice 
the rest of my money as well — money slowly 
accumulated out of my own labours. And the 
relief of finding that this will not be necessary is 
immense. We must sell our house at once, and 
find a smaller one. At present I am not afraid 
of the changed circumstances ; indeed, if I could 
only recover my power of writing, we need not 
leave our home. The temptation is to get a book 



Memories 261 

written somehow, because I could make money 
by any stuff just now. On the other hand, it 
will almost be to me a relief to part from the 
home so haunted with the memory of Alec — 
though that will be a dreadful pain to Maud and 
Maggie. As far as living more simply goes, that 
does not trouble me in the least. I have always 
been slightly uncomfortable about the ease and 
luxury in which we lived. I only wish we had 
lived more simply all along, so that I could have 
put by a little more. I have told Maud exactly 
how matters stand, and she acquiesces, though I 
can see that, just at this time, the thought of 
handing over to strangers the house where we 
have lived all our married life, the rooms where 
Alec and the baby died, is a deep grief to her. 
To me that is almost a relief I have dreaded 
going back there. To-night I told Maggie, and she 
broke out into long weeping. But even so there 
is something about the idea of being poor, strange 
to say, which touches a sense of romance in the 
child. She does not realise the poky restrictions 
of the new life. 

And still stranger to me is the way in which 
this solid, tangible trouble seems to have restored 
my energy and calm. I found myself clear- 



262 The Altar Fire 

headed, able to grasp the business questions 
which arose, gifted with a hard lucidity of mind 
that I did not know I possessed. It is a relief to 
get one's teeth into something, to have hard, 
definite occupation to distract one ; indeed, it 
hardly seems to me in the light of a misfortune 
at present, so much as a blessed tangible problem 
to be grappled with and solved. What I should 
have felt if all had been lost, and if I had had to 
resign my liberty, and take up some practical 
occupation, I hardly know. I do not think I 
should even have dreaded that in my present 
frame of mind. 

September 15, 1889. 
I have been thinking all day long of my last 
walk with Alec, the day before he was taken ill. 
Maud had gone out with Maggie ; and the little 
sturdy figure came to my room to ask if I was 
going out. I was finishing a book that I was 
reading for the evening's work ; I had been out 
in the morning, and I had not intended to go out 
again, as it was cold and drizzling. I very nearly 
said that I could not go, and I had a shadow of 
vexation at being interrupted. But I looked up 
at him, as he stood by the door, and there was a 



Last Walk with Alec 263 

tiny shadow of loneliness upon his face ; and I 
thank God now that I put my book down at once, 
and consented cheerfully. He brightened up at 
this ; he fetched my cap and stick, and we went 
oflf together. I am glad to think that I had him 
to myself that day. He was in a more confiden- 
tial mood than usual. Perhaps — who knows ? — 
there was some shadow of death upon him, some 
instinct to clasp hands closer before the end. He 
asked me to tell him some stories of my school- 
days, and what I used to do as a boy — but he 
was full of alertness and life, breaking into my 
narrative to point out a nest that we had seen in 
the spring, and that now hung, wind-dried and 
ruinous, among the boughs. Coming back, he 
flagged a little, and did what he seldom did, put 
his arm in my own ; how tenderly the touch of 
the little hand, the restless fingers on my arm 
thrilled me — the hand that lies cold and folded 
and shrivelled in the dark ground ! He w^as 
proud that evening of having had me all to him- 
self, and said to Maggie that we had talked 
secrets, '* such as men talk when there are no 
women to ask questions." But thinking that this 
had wounded Maggie a little, he went and put 
his arm round her, and I heard him say some- 



264 The Altar Fire 

thing about its being all nonsense, and that we 
had wished for her all the time. . . . 

Ah, how can I endure it, the silence, the 
absence, the lost smile, the child of my own 
whom I loved from head to foot, body, soul and 
spirit all alike ! I keep coming across signs of 
his presence everywhere, his books, his garden 
tools in the summer-house, the little presents he 
gave me, on my study chimney-piece, his cap and 
coat hanging in the cupboard — it is these little 
trifling things, signs of life and joyful days, that 
sting the heart and pierce the brain with sorrow. 
If I could but have one sight of him, one word 
with him, one smile, to show that he is, that he 
remembers, that he waits for us, I could endure 
it ; but I look into the dark and no answer comes ; 
I send my wild entreaties pulsating through the 
worlds of space, cr>dng, "Are you there, my 
child ? " That his life is there, hidden with God, 
I do not doubt ; but is it he himself, or has he 
fallen back, like the drop of water in the fountain, 
into the great tide of life ? That is no comfort to 
me ; it is he that I want, that union of body and 
mind, of life and love, that was called my child 
and is mine no more. 



Without Consolation 265 

September 20, 1889. 
Such a loss as mine passes over the soul like a 
plough cleaving a pasture line by line. The true 
stuff of the spirit is revealed and laid out in all its 
bareness. That customary outline, that surface 
growth of herb and blade, is all pared away. I 
have been accustomed to think myself a religious 
man — I have never been without the sense of God 
over and about me. But when an experience like 
this comes, it shows me what my religion is worth. 
I do not turn to God in love and hope ; I do not 
know Him, I do not understand Him. I feel 
that He must have forgotten me, or that He is 
indifferent to me, or that He is incapable of love, 
and works blindly and sternly. My reason in 
vain says that the great and beautiful gift itself 
of the child's life and the child's love came from 
Him. I do not question His power or His right 
to take my child from me. But I endure only 
because I must, not willingly or loyally or lov- 
ingly. It is not that I feel the injustice of His 
taking the boy away ; it is a far deeper sense of 
injustice than that. The injustice lies in the fact 
that He made the child so utterly dear and de- 
sired ; that He set him so firmly in my heart ; 
this on the one hand ; and on the other, that He 



266 The Altar Fire 

does not, if He must rend the little life away and 
leave the bleeding gap, send at the same time 
some love, some strength, some patience to make 
the pain bearable. I cannot believe that the love 
I bore my boy was anything but a sweet and 
holy influence. It gave me the one thing of 
which I am in hourly need — something outside of 
myself and my own interests, to love better than 
I loved even myself. It seems indeed a pure and 
simple loss, unless the lesson God would have us 
learn is the stoical lesson of detachment, indiffer- 
ence, cold self-sufficiency. It is like taking the 
crutches away from a lame man, knocking the 
props away from a tottering building. An opti- 
mistic moralist would say that I loved Alec too 
selfishly, and even that the love of the child 
turned away my heart from the jealous Heart of 
God, who demands a perfect surrender, a perfect 
love. But how can one love that which one does 
not know or understand, a Power that walks in 
darkness, and that gives us on the one hand 
sweet, beautiful, and desirable things, and on the 
other strikes them from us when we need them 
most ? It is not as if I did not desire to trust and 
love God utterly. I should think even this sor- 
row a light price to pay, if it gave me a pure and 



The Darkened Heart 267 

deep trust in the mercy and goodness of God. 
But instead of that it fills me with dismay, blank 
suspicion, fretful resistance. I do not feel that 
there is anything which God could send me or 
reveal to me, which would enable me to acquit 
Him of hardness or injustice. I will not, though 
He slay me, say that I trust Him and love Him 
when I do not. He may crush me with repeated 
blows of His hand, but He has given me the 
divine power of judging, of testing, of balancing ; 
and I must use it even in His despite. He does 
not require, I think, a dull and broken submis- 
siveness, the submissiveness of the creature that 
is ready to admit anything, if only he can be 
spared another blow. What He requires, so my 
spirit tells me, is an eager co-operation, a brave 
approval, a generous belief in His goodness and 
His justice ; and this I cannot give, and it is He 
that has made me unable to give it. The wound 
may heal, the dull pain may die away, I may 
forget, the child may become a golden memory — 
but I cannot again believe that this is the sur- 
render God desires. What I think He must 
desire, is that I should love the child, miss him 
as bitterly as ever, feel my day darkened by his 
loss, and yet turn to Him gratefully and bravely 



268 The Altar Fire 

in perfect love and trust. It may be that I may be 
drawn closer to those whom I love, but the loss 
must still remain irreparable, because I might 
have learned to love my dear ones better through 
Alec's presence, and not through his absence. It 
is His will, I do not doubt it ; but I cannot see 
the goodness or the justice of the act, and I will 
not pretend to myself that I acquiesce. 

September 25, 1889. 

Yesterday was a warm, delicious, soft day, full 
of a gentle languor, the air balmy and sweet, the 
sunshine like the purest gold ; we sate out all the 
morning under the cliff, in the warm dry sand. 
To the right and left of us lay the blue bay, the 
waves breaking with short, crisp sparkles on the 
shore. We saw headland after headland sinking 
into the haze ; a few fishing-boats moved slowly 
about, and far down on the horizon we watched 
the smoke of a great ocean-steamer. We talked, 
Maud and I, for the first time, I think, without 
reserve, without bitterness, almost without grief, 
of Alec. What sustains her is the certainty that 
he is as he was, somewhere, far off, as brave and 
loving as ever, waiting for us, but waiting with a 



A Mother's Love 269 

perfect understanding and knowledge of why we 
are separated. She dreams of him thus, looking 
down upon her, and seeming, in her dream, to 
wonder what there can be to grieve about. I 
suppose that a mother has a sense of oneness with 
a child that a father cannot have. It is a deep 
and marvellous faith, an intuition that transcends 
all reason, a radiant certainty. I cannot attain to 
it. But in the warmth and light of her belief, I 
grew to feel that at least there was some explana- 
tion of it all. Not by chance is the dear gift sent 
us, not by chance do we learn to love it, not by 
chance is it rent from us. Lying thus, talking 
softly, in so gracious a world, a world that satis- 
fied every craving of the senses, I came to realise 
that the Father must wish us well, and that if the 
shadow^ fell upon our path, it was not to make us 
cold and bitter-hearted. Infinite lyove ! it came 
near to me in that hour, and clasped me to a sor- 
rowful, tender, beating Heart. I read Maud, at 
her request, Evelyn Hope, and the strong and 
patient love, that dwells so serenely and softly 
upon the incidents of death, yet without the least 
touch of morbidity and gloom, treating death 
itself as a quiet slumber of the soul , taught me 
for a moment how to be brave. 



270 The Altar Fire 

*'You will wake and remember, and under- 
stand," — my voice broke and tears came, un- 
bidden tears which I did not even desire to 
conceal — and in that moment the spirit of my 
wife came near to me, and soul looked into the 
eyes of soul, with a perfect and bewildering joy, 
the very joy of God. 

October 10, 1889. 
We have had the kindest, dearest letters from 
our neighbours about our last misfortune. But 
no one seems to anticipate that we shall be 
obliged to leave the place. They naturally sup- 
pose that I shall be able to make as large an in- 
come as I want by waiting. And so I suppose I 
could. I talked the whole matter over with 
Maud, and said I would abide by her decision. I 
confessed that I had an extreme repugnance to the 
thought of turning out books for monej^, books 
which I knew to be inferior ; but I also said that 
if she could not bear to leave the place, I had 
little doubt that I could, for the present at all 
events, make enough money to render it possible 
for us to continue to live there. I said frankly 
that it would be a relief to me to leave a house so 
sadly haunted by memory, and that I should my- 



Uprooting 271 

self prefer to live elsewhere, framing our house- 
hold on very simple lines — and to let the power of 
writing come back if it would, not to try and force 
it. It would be a dreadful prospect to me to live 
thus, overshadowed by recollection, working dis- 
mally for money ; but I suppose it would be 
possible, even bracing. Maud did not hesitate ; 
she spoke quite frankly ; on the one hand the 
very associations, which I dread most, were evi- 
dently to her a source of sad delight ; and the 
thought of strangers living in rooms so hallowed 
by grief was like a profanation. Then there was 
the fact of all her relations with our friends and 
neighbours ; but she said quite simply that my 
feeling outweighed it all, and that she w^ould far 
rather begin life afresh somewhere else, than put 
me in the position I described. We determined 
to try and find a small house in the neighbour- 
hood of her own old home in Gloucestershire ; 
and this thought, I am sure, gave her real happi- 
ness. We determined at once what we would 
do ; we would let our house for a term of years, 
take what furniture we needed, and dispose of the 
rest ; we arranged to go off to Gloucestershire, as 
soon as possible, to look for a house. We both 
realise that we must learn to retrench at once. 



2 72 The Altar Fire 

We shall have less than half our former income, 
counting in what we hope to get from the old 
house. I am not at all afraid of that. I always 
vaguely disliked living as comfortably as we did 
— but it will not be agreeable to have to calculate 
all our expenses — that may perhaps mend itself, 
I can but begin my writing again. 

All this helps me — I am ashamed to say how 
much — though sometimes the thought of all the 
necessary arrangements weighs on me like a 
leaden weight, on days when I fall back into a 
sad, idle, hopeless repining. Sometimes it seems 
as if the old happy life was all broken up and 
gone for ever ; and, so strange a thing is memory 
and imagination, that even the months over- 
shadowed by the loss of my faculty of work seem 
to me now impossibly fragrant and beautiful, my 
sufferings unreal and unsubstantial. Real trou- 
ble, real grief, have at least the bracing force of 
actuality, and sweep aside with a strong hand all 
artificial self-made miseries and glooms. 

December 15, 1889. 
I have kept no record of these weeks. They 
have been full of business, sadness, and yet of 
hope. We went back home for a time ; we made 



Farewells 273 

our farewells, and it moved me strangelj^ to see 
that our departure was viewed almost with con- 
sternation. It is Maud's loss that will be felt. 
I have lived very selfishly and dully myself, but 
even so I was half-glad to find that even I should 
be missed. At such a time everything is forgot- 
ten and forgiven, and such grudging, peaceful 
neighbourliness as even I have shown seems ap- 
preciated and valued. It was a heartrending 
business reviving our sorrow, and it plunged me 
for a time into my old dry bitterness of spirit. 
But I hardened my heart as best I could, and felt 
more deeply than ever, how far beyond my 
powers of endurance it would have been to have 
taken up the old life, and Alec not there. Again 
and again it was like a knife plunged into my 
heart with an almost physical pain. Not so with 
Maud and Maggie — it was to them a treasure of 
precious memories, and the}'- could dare to indulge 
their grief. I can't write of it, I can't think of 
it. Wherever I turned, I saw him in a hundred 
guises — as a tiny child, as a small, sturdy boy, as 
the son we lost. 

We have let the house to some very kind and 
reasonable people who have made things very 
easy to us ; and to me at least it was a sort of 



2/4 The Altar Fire 

heavj^ joy to take the last meal in the old home, 
to drive away, to see the landscape fade from 
sight. I shall never willingly return. It would 
seem to me like a wilful rolling among the thorns 
of life, a gathering-in of spears into one's breast. 
I seemed like a naked creature that had lost its 
skin, that shrank and bled at every touch. 

February lo, 1890. 

I have been house-hunting, and I do not pre- 
tend to dislike it. The sight of unknown houses, 
high garden walls, windows looking into blind 
courts, staircases leading to lofts, dark cupboards, 
old lumber, has a very stimulating effect on my 
imagination. Perhaps, too, I sometimes think, 
these old places are full of haunting spiritual 
presences, clinging, half tearfully, half joyfully to 
the familiar scenes, half sad, perhaps, that they 
did not make a finer thing of the little confined 
life ; half glad to be free — as a man, strong and 
well, might look with a sense of security into a 
room where he had borne an operation. But I 
have never believed much in haunted rooms. 
The Father's many mansions can hardly be 
worth deserting for the little, dark houses of our 
tiny life. 



An Old House 275 

I disliked some of the houses intensely — so ugly 
and pretentious, so inconvenient and dull ; but 
even so it is pleasant in fancy to plan the life 
one would live there, the rooms one would use. 
One house touched me inexpressibly. It was a 
house I knew from the outside in a little town 
where I used to go and spend a few weeks every 
year with an old aunt of mine. The name of the 
little town — I saw it in an agent's list — had a sort 
of enchantment forme, a golden haze of memory. 
I was allowed a freedom there I was allowed 
nowhere else, I was petted and made much of, 
and I used to spend most of my time in sauntering 
about, just looking, watching, scrutinising things 
with the hard and uncritical observation of child- 
hood. When I got to the place, I was surprised to 
find that I knew well the look of the house I went 
to see, though I had not even entered it. Two 
neat, contented, slightly absurd old maiden ladies 
had lived there, who used to walk out together, 
dressed exactly alike in some faded fashion. The 
laurels and yews still grew thickly in the shrub- 
bery, and shaded the windows of the ugly little 
parlours. An old, quiet, respectable maid showed 
me round ; she had been in service there for 
twenty years, and she was tearfully lamenting 



2 76 The Altar Fire 

over the break-up of the home. The old ladies 
had lived there for sixty years. One of them had 
died ten years before, the other had lingered on 
to extreme old age. The house was like a 
museum, a specimen of a house of the thirties, in 
which nothing had ever been touched or changed. 
The strange wall-papers and chintzes, the crewel- 
work chairs, the mirrors, the light maple furni- 
ture, the case of moth-eaten humming-birds, the 
dull engravings of historical pictures, the old 
books — the drawing-room table was covered with 
annuals and keepsakes, Moore's poems, Mrs. 
Barbauld's works— all had a pathetic ugliness, 
redeemed by a certain consistency of quality. 
And then the poky, comfortable arrangements, 
the bath- chair in the coach-house, the four-posted 
bedsteads, the hand-rail on the stairs, the sand- 
bags for the doors, all spoke of a timid, invalid 
life, a dim backwater in the tide of things. There 
had been children there at some time, for there 
were broken toys, collections of dried plants, 
curious stones, in an attic. The little drama of 
the house shaped itself for me, as I walked 
through the frousy, faded rooms, with a touch- 
ing insistence. This bedroom had never been 
used since Miss Eleanor died — and I could fancy 



An Old House 277 

the poor, little, timid, precise life flitting away 
among the well-known surroundings. This had 
been Miss Jackson's favourite room — it was so 
quiet — she had died there, sitting in her chair, a 
few weeks before. The leisurely , harmless routine 
of the quiet household rose before me. I could 
imagine Miss Jackson writing her letters, reading 
her book, eating her small meals, making the 
same humble and grateful remarks, entertaining 
her old friends. Year after year it had gone on, 
just the same, the clock ticking loud in the hall," 
the sun creeping round the old rooms, the birds 
singing in the garden, the faint footsteps in the 
road. It had begun, that gentle routine, long be- 
fore I had been born into the world ; and it was 
strange to me to think that, as I passed through 
the most stirring experiences of my life, nothing 
ever stirred or moved or altered here. Miss 
Jackson had felt Miss Eleanor's death very much; 
she had hardly ever left the house since, and they 
had had no company. Yes, what a woefully be- 
wildering thing death swooping down into that 
quiet household, with all its tranquil security, 
must have been ! One wondered what Miss 
Eleanor had felt, when she had to die, to pass 
out into the unknown dark out of a world so 



2 78 The Altar Fire 

tender, so familiar, so peaceful ; and what had 
poor Miss Jackson made of it, when she was left 
alone ? She must have found it all very puzzling, 
very dreary. And j^et, in the past, perhaps one 
or both of them, had had dreams of a fuller life, 
had fancied that something more than tenderness 
had looked out of the eyes of man ; well, it had 
come to nothing, whatever it might have been ; 
and the two old ladies had settled dowm, perhaps 
with some natural repining, to their unexciting, 
contented life, the da}^ filled with little duties 
and pleasures, the night with innocent sleep. 
It had not been a selfish life — they had been good 
to the poor, the maid told me ; and in old days 
they had often had their nephews and nieces to 
stay with them. But those children had grown 
up and gone out into the world, and no longer 
cared to return to the dull little house 
with its precise ways, and the fidgety love that 
had once embraced them. 

The whole thing seemed a mysterious mixture 
of purposelessness and contentment. Rumours 
of wars, social convulsions, patriotic hopes, great 
ideas, had swept on their course outside, and had 
never stirred the drowsy current of life behind 
the garden walls. The sisters had lived, sweetly. 



An Old House 279 

perhaps, and softly, like trees in some sequestered 
woodland, hardly recognising their own gentle 
lapse of strength and activity. 

And now the whole thing was over for good. 
Curious and indifferent people came, tramped 
about the house, pronounced it old-fashioned and 
inconvenient. I could not do that myself; the 
place was brimful of pathetic evidences of what 
had been. Soon, no doubt, the old house would 
wear a different guise — it would be renovated and 
restored, the furniture would drift away to second- 
hand shops, the litter would be thrown out upon 
the rubbish heap. New lives, new relationships 
would spring up ; children would be born, boys 
would play, lovers would embrace, sufferers would 
lie musing, men and women w^ould die in those 
refurbished rooms. Everthing w^ould drift on- 
wards, and the lives to whom each corner, each 
stair, each piece of furniture had meant so much, 
would become a memory first, and then fade into 
nothingness. Where and what were the two old 
ladies now ? Were they gone out utterly, like an 
extinguished flame ? were they in some new home 
of tranquil peace? Were they adjusting themselves 
with a sense of timid impotence— those slender, 
tired spirits — to new and bewildering conditions ? 



28o The Altar Fire 

The old, dull house called to me that day with 
a hundred faint voices and tremulous echoes. I 
could make nothing of it ; for though it swept 
the strings of my heart with a ghostly music, it 
seemed to have no certain message for me, but 
the message of oblivion and silence. 

I was sorry, as I went away, to leave the poor 
maidservant to her lonely and desolate memories. 
She had to leave her comfortable kitchen and her 
easy routine, for new duties and new faces, and I 
could see that she anticipated the change with 
sad dismay. 

It seemed to me in that hour as though the 
cruelty and the tenderness of the world were very 
mysteriously blended — there was no lack of ten- 
derness in the old house with its innumerable 
small associations, its sheltered calm. And then 
suddenly the stroke must fall upon lives whose 
very security and gentleness seemed to have been 
so ill a preparation for sterner and darker things. It 
would have been more loving, one thought, either 
to have made the whole fabric more austere, more 
precarious from the first ; or else to have bestowed 
a deep courage and a fertile hope, a firmer endur- 
ance, rather than to have confronted lives so frail 
and delicate with the terrors of the vast unknown. 



Our New Home 281 

April 8, 1890. 

Our new house is charming, beautiful, home- 
Hke. It is an old stone building, formerl}^ a 
farm ; it has a quaint garden and orchard, and 
the wooded hill runs up steeply behind, with a 
stream in front. It is on the outskirts of a 
village, and we are within three miles of Maud's 
old home, so that she knows all the country 
round. We have got two of our old servants, 
and a solid comfortable gardener, a native of the 
place. The house within is quaint and comfort- 
able. We have a spare bedroom ; I have no 
study but shall use the little panelled dining- 
room. We have had much to do in settling in, 
and I have done a great deal of hard physical 
work myself, in the way of moving furniture and 
hanging pictures, inducing much wholesome 
fatigue. Maggie, who broke down dreadfully on 
leaving the old home, with the wonderful spring 
that children have, is full of excitement and even 
delight in the new house. I rather dread the 
time when all our occupations shall be over, and 
when we shall settle down to the routine of life. 
I begin to wonder how I shall occupy myself. I 
mean to do a good many odd jobs— we have no 
trap, and there will be a good deal of fetching 



282 The Altar Fire 

and carrying to be done. We shall resume our 
lessons, Maggie and I ; there will be reading, 
gardening, walking. One ought to be able to 
live philosophically enough. What would I not 
give to be able to write now ! but the instinct 
seems wholly and utterly dead and gone. I can- 
not even conceive that I ever used, solemnly and 
gravely, to write about imaginary people, their 
jests and epigrams, their sorrows and cares. lyife 
and art ! I used to suppose that it was all a softly 
moulded, rhythmic, sonorous affair, strophe and 
antistrophe ; but the griefs and sorrows of art are 
so much nearer each other, like major and minor 
keys, than the griefs and sorrows of life. In art, 
the musician smiles and sighs alternately, but his 
sighing is a balanced, an ordered mood ; the 
inner heart is content, as the pool is content, 
whether it mirrors the sunlight or the lonely 
star ; but in life, joy is to grief what music is to 
aching silence, dumbness, inarticulate pain — 
though perhaps in that silence one hears a 
deeper, stranger sound, the buzz of the whirring 
atom, the soft thunder of worlds plunging 
through the void, joyless, gigantic, oblivious 
forces. 

Is it good thus to have the veils of life rent 



The New Life 283 

asunder ? If life, the world's life, activity, work, 
be the end of existence, then it is not good. It 
breaks the spring of energy, so that one goes 
heavily and sorely. But what if that be not the 
end ? What then ? 

May 16, 1890. 
At present the new countryside is a great 
resource. I walk far among the wolds ; I find 
exquisite villages, where every stone-built house 
seems to have style and quality ; I come down 
upon green water-meadows, with clear streams 
flowing by banks set with thorn-bushes and 
alders. The churches, the manor-houses, of grey 
rubble smeared with plaster, with stone roof- tiles, 
are a feast for eye and heart. Long days in the 
open air bring me a dull equable health of body, a 
pleasant weariness, a good-humoured indifference. 
My mind becomes grass-grown, full of weeds, 
ruinous ; but I welcome it as at least a respite 
from suffering. It is strange to think of myself 
at what ought, I suppose, to be the busiest and 
fullest time of my life, living here like a tree in 
lonel}^ fields. What would be the normal life ? 
A little house in a London street, I suppose, with 
a lot of white paint and bookshelves. lyuncheons, 



2 84 The Altar Fire 

dinners, plays, music, clubs, week-end visits to 
lively houses, a rush abroad, a few country visits 
in the winter. Very harmless and pleasant if one 
enjoyed it, but to me inconceivable and insupport- 
able. Perhaps I should be happier and brisker, 
perhaps the time would go quicker. Ought one 
to make up one's mind that this would be the 
normal life, and that therefore one had better 
learn to accommodate oneself to it ? Does one 
pay penalties for not submitting oneself to the 
ordinary laws of human intercourse ? Doubtless 
one does. But then, made as I am, I should 
have to pay penalties which would seem to be 
even heavier for the submission. It is there that 
the puzzle lies ; that a man should be created 
with the strong instinct that I feel for liberty and 
independence and solitude and the quiet of the 
country, and then that he should discover that 
the life he so desires should be the one that 
develops all the worst side of him — morbidity, 
fastidiousness, gloom, discontent. This is the 
shadow of civilisation ; that it makes people in- 
tellectual, alert, craving for stimulus, and yet 
sucks their nerves diy of the strength that makes 
such things enjoyable. 

And still, as I go in and out, the death of Alec 



An Inexplicable Thing 285 

seems the one absolutely unintelligible and inex- 
plicable thing, a gloom penetrated by no star. It 
was the one thing that might have made me un- 
selfish, tender-hearted, the anxious care of some 
other than myself. " Perhaps," says an old friend 
writing to me with a clumsy attempt at comfort, 
' ' perhaps he was taken mercifulh^ away from 
some evil to come.'* A good many people say 
that, and feel it quite honestly. But what an in- 
supportable idea of the ways of Providence, that 
God had planned a prospect for the child so 
dreadful that even his swift removal should be 
tolerable by comparison ! What a helpless, hope- 
less confession of failure ! No ; either the whole 
short life, closed by the premature death, must 
have been designed, planned, executed deliber- 
ately ; or else O-od is at the mercy of blank cross- 
currents, opposing forces, tendencies even stronger 
than Himself; and then the very idea of God 
crumbles away, and God becomes the blank and 
inscrutable force working behind a gentle, good- 
humoured will, which w^ould be kind and gracious 
if it could, but is trammelled and bound b}" some- 
thing stronger ; that was the Greek view, of 
course — God above man, and Fate above God. 
The worst of it is that it has a horrible vraisem- 



286 The Altar Fire 

blance, and seems to lie even nearer to the facts 
of life than our own tender-hearted and senti- 
mental theories and schemes of religion. 

But whether it be God or fate, the burden has 
to be borne. And my one endeavour must be to 
bear it myself, consciously and courageously, and 
to shift it so far as I can from the gentler and 
tenderer shoulders of those whose life is so 
strangely linked with mine. 

May 25, 1890. 

One sees a house, like the house we now live 
in, from a road as one passes, from the windows 
of a train. It seems to be set at the end of the 
world, with the earth's sunset distance behind it — 
it seems a fortress of quiet, a place of infinite 
peace ; and then one lives in it, and behold, it 
is a centre of a little active life, with all sorts of 
cross-currents darting to and fro, over it, past it. 

Or again one thinks, as one sees such a house 
in passing, that there at least one could live in 
meditation and cloistered calm ; that there would 
be neither cares nor anxieties ; that one would be 
content to sit, just looking out at the quiet fields, 
pacing to and fro, receiving impressions, mus- 
ing, selecting, apprehending — and then one lives 



Routine 287 

there, and the stream of life is as turbid, as fretful 
as ever. The strange thing is that such delusions 
survive any amount of experience ; that one can- 
not read into other lives the things that trouble 
one's own. 

A little definite vScheme opens before us here ; 
old friends of Maud's find us out, simple, kindly, 
tiresome people. There is an exchange of small 
civilities, there are duties, activities, relationships. 
To Maud these things come by the light of na- 
ture ; to her the vsimplest interchange of definite 
thoughts is as natural as to breathe. I hear her 
calm, sweet, full voice answering, asking. To 
me these things are utterly wearisome and profit- 
less. I want only to speak of the things for 
which I care, and to people attuned to the same 
key of thought ; a basis of sympathy and temper- 
amental differences — that is the perfect union of 
qualities for a friend. But these stolid, kindly 
parsons, with brisk, active wives, ingenuous 
daughters, heavy sons — I want either to know 
them better, or not to know them at all. I w^ant 
to enter the house, the furnished chambers of 
people's minds; and I am willing enough to 
throw my own open to a cordial guest ; but I do 
not want to stand and chatter in some debatable 



288 The Altar Fire 

land of social conventionality. I have no store 
of simple geniality. The other night we went to 
dine quietly with a parson near here, a worthy 
fellow, happy and useful. Afterwards, in the 
drawing-room, I sate beside my host. I saw 
Maud listening, with rapt interest, to the chron- 
icles of all the village families, robustly and 
unimaginatively told by the parson's wife ; mean- 
while I, tortured by intolerable e7i7i7ii, pumped 
up questions, tried a hundred subjects with my 
worthy host. He told me long and prolix vStories, 
he discoursed on rural needs. At last I said that 
we must be going ; he replied with genuine dis- 
appointment that the night was still young, and 
that it was a pity to break up our pleasant con- 
fabulation. I saw with a shock of wonder that 
he had evidently been enjoying himself hugely ; 
that it was a pleasure to him, for some unaccount- 
able reason, not to hear a new person talk, but to 
say the same things that he had said for years, to 
a new person. It is not ideas that most people 
want ; they are satisfied with mere gregarious- 
ness, the sight and sound of other figures. They 
like to produce the same stock of ideas, the same 
conclusions. "As I always say," was a phrase 
that was for ever on my entertainer's lips. I 



Monotony 289 

suppose that probably my own range iS just as 
limited, but I have an Athenian hankering after 
novelty of thought, the new mintage of the mind. 
I loathe the old obliterated coinage, with the 
stamp all rounded and faint. Dulness, sameness, 
triteness, are they essential parts of life ? I sup- 
pose it is really that my nervous energy is low, 
and requires stimulus: if it were strong and 
full, the current would flow into the trivial things. 
I derive a certain pleasure from the sight of 
other people's rooms, the familiar, uncomfortable, 
shabby furniture, the drift of pictures, the debris 
of ornament — all that stands for difference and 
individuality. But one can't get inside most 
people's minds ; they only admit one to the 
public rooms. A crushing fatigue and depression 
settles down upon me in such hours, and then 
the old blank sense of grief and loss comes flow- 
ing back — it is old already, because it seems to 
have stained all the backward pages of life ; then 
follows the weary, restless night ; and the break- 
ing of the grey, pitiless dawn. 

June 3, 1890. 
I do not want, even in my thoughts, to put the 

contemplative life above the practical life. Highest 
19 



290 The Altar Fire 

of all I would put a combination of the two — a 
man of high and clear ideals, in a position where 
he was able to give them shape — a great construct- 
ive statesman, a great educator, a great man of 
business, who was also keenly alive to social pro- 
blems, a great philanthropist. Next to these I 
would put great thinkers, moralists, poets — all 
who inspire. Then I would put the absolutely 
effective instruments of great designs — legislators, 
lawyers, teachers, priests, doctors, writers — men 
without originality, but with a firm conception of 
civic and human duty. And then I would put 
all those who, in a small sphere, exercise a direct, 
simple influence — and then come the large mass 
of mankind ; people w^ho w^ork faithfully, from 
instinct and necessity, but without any particular 
design or desire, except to live honestly, hon- 
ourably, and respectably, with no urgent sense 
of the duty of serving others, taking life as it 
comes, practical individualists, in fact. No higher 
than these, but certainly no lower, I should put 
quiet, contemplative, reflective people, who are 
theoretical individualists. They are not very 
effective people generally , and they have a certain 
poetical quality ; they cannot originate, but they 
can appreciate. I look upon all these individual- 



Contemplative Life 



2QT 



ists, whether practical or theoretical, as the 
average mass of humanity, the common soldiers, 
so to speak, as distinguished from the officers. 
I^ife is for them a discipline, and their raison d'etre 
is that of the learner, as opposed to that of the 
teacher. To all of them, experience is the main 
point ; they are all in the school of God ; they are 
being prepared for something. The object is that 
they should apprehend something, and the chan- 
nel through which it comes matters little. They 
do the necessary work of the world ; they sup- 
port those who from infirmity, weakness, age, or 
youth cannot support themselves. There is 
room, I think, in the world for both kinds of indi- 
vidualist, though the contemplative individual- 
ists are in the minority ; and perhaps it must be 
so, because a certain lassitude is characteristic of 
them. If they were in the majority in any nation, 
one would have a simple, patient, unambitious 
race, who would tend to become the subjects of 
other more vigorous nations : our Indian empire 
is a case in point. Probably China is a similar 
nation, preserved from conquest by its inaccessi- 
bility and its numerical force. Japan is an in- 
stance of the strange process of a contemplative 
nation becoming a practical one. The curious 



292 The Altar Fire 

thing is that Christianity, which is essentially a 
contemplative, unmilitant, unpatriotic, unambi- 
tious force, decidedly oriental in type, should 
have become, by a mysterious transmutation, the 
religion of active, inventive, conquering nations. 
I have no doubt that the essence of Christianity 
lies in a contemplative simplicity, and that it is 
in strong opposition to what is commonly called 
civilisation. It aims at improving society through 
the uplifting of the individual, not at uplifting the 
individual through social agencies. We have im- 
proved upon that in our latter-day wisdom, for 
the Christian ought to be inherentl}' unpatriotic, 
or rather his patriotism ought to be of an all-embrac- 
ing rather than of an antagonistic kind. I do not 
want to make lofty excuses for myself ; my own 
unworldliness is not an abnegation at all, but a 
deliberate preference for obscurity. Still I should 
maintain that the vital and spiritual strength of 
a nation is measured, not b}^ the activity of its 
organisations, but by the number of quiet, simple, 
virtuous, and high-minded persons that it con- 
tains. And thus, in my own case, though the 
choice is made for me by temperament and cir- 
cumstances, I have no pricking of conscience on 
the subject of my scant}^ activities. It is not 



A New Friend 293 

mere activity that makes the diflference. The 
danger of mere activity is that it tends to make 
men complacent, to lead them to think that they 
are following the paths of virtue, when they are 
only enmeshed in conventionality. The dangers 
of the quiet life are indolence, morbidity, sloth, 
depression, unmanliness ; but I think that it de- 
velops humility, and allows the daily and hourly 
message of God to sink into the soul. After all, 
the one supreme peril is that of self-satisfaction 
and finality. If a man is content with what he 
is, there is nothing to make him long for what is 
higher. Any one who looks around him with 
a candid gaze, becomes aware that our life is 
and must be a provisional one, that it has some- 
how fallen short of its possibilities. To better it 
is the best of all courses ; but next to that it is 
more desirable that men should hope for and de- 
sire a greater harmony of things, than that they 
should acquiesce in what is so strangely and 
sadly amiss. 

June 18, 1890. 

I have made a new friend, whose contact and 
example held me so strangely and mj^steriously, 
that it seems to me almost as though I had been 



294 The Altar Fire 

led hither that I might know him. He is an old 
and lonely man, a great invalid, who lives at a 
little manor-house a mile or two away. Maud 
knew him by name, but had never seen him. 
He wrote me a courtly kind of note, apologising 
for being unable to call, and expressing a hope 
that we might be able to go and see him. The 
house stands on the edge of the village, looking 
out on the churchyard, a many-gabled building 
of grey stone, a long flagged terrace in front of 
it, terminated by posts with big stone balls ; a 
garden behind, and a wood behind that — the 
whole scene unutterably peaceful and beautiful. 
We entered by a little hall, and a kindly, plain, 
middle-aged woman, with a Quaker-like precision 
of mien and dress, came out to greet us, with 
a fresh kindliness that had nothing conventional 
about it. She said that her uncle was not very 
well, but she thought he would be able to see us. 
She left us for a moment. There was a cleanness 
and a fragrance about the old house that was very 
characteristic. It was most simply, even barely 
furnished, but with a settled, ancient look about 
it, that gave one a sense of long association. She 
presently returned, and said, smiling, that her 
uncle would like to see us, but separatety, as he 



A Walk in the Garden 295 

was very far from strong. She took Maud away, 
and returning, walked with me round the garden, 
which had the same dainty and simple perfection 
about it. I could see that my hostess had the 
poetical passion for flowers ; she knew the names 
of all, and spoke of them almost as one might of 
children. This was very wilful and impatient, 
and had to be kept in good order ; that one re- 
quired coaxing and tender usage. We went on 
to the wood, in all its summer foliage, and she 
showed us a little arbour where her uncle loved 
to sit, and where the birds would come at his 
whistle. "They are looking at us out of the 
trees everywhere," she said, " but they are shy 
of strangers " — and indeed we heard soft chirping 
and rustling everywhere. An old dog and a cat 
accompanied us. She drew my attention to the 
latter. " Look at Pippa," she said, "she is de- 
termined to walk with us, and equally determined 
not to seem to need our company, as if she had 
come out of her own accord, and was surprised to 
find us in her garden." Pippa, hearing her name 
mentioned, stalked off with an air of mystery and 
dignity into the bushes, and we could see her look- 
ing out at us ; but when we continued our stroll, 
she flew out past us, and walked on stiffly ahead. 



296 The Altar Fire 

** She gets a great deal of fun out of her Ittle 

dramas," said Miss . " Now poor old Rufus 

has no sense of drama or mystery — he is frankly 
glad of our compau}^ in a very low and common 
way — there is nothing aristocratic about him." 
Old Rufus looked up and wagged his tail humbly. 
Presently she went on to talk about her uncle, 
and contrived to tell me a great deal in a very 
few words. I learnt that he was the last male 
representative of an old family, who had long 
held the small estate here ; that after a distin- 
guished Oxford career, he had met with a serious 
accident that had made him a permanent invalid. 
That he had settled down here, not expecting to 
live more than a few years, and that he was now 
over sevent}^ ; it had been the quietest of lives, 
she said, and a very happy one, too, in spite of 
his disabilities. He read a great deal, and inter- 
ested himself in local affairs, but sometimes for 
weeks together could do nothing. I gathered that 
she was his only surviving relation, and had lived 
with him from her childhood. ** You will think," 
she added, laughing, " that he is the kind of per- 
son who is shown by his friends as a wonderful 
old man, and who turns out to be a person like 
the patriarch Casby, in Little Dorrit, whose sane- 



The Squire 297 

tit)^ like Samson's depended entirely upon the 
length of his hair. But he is not in the least like 
that, and I will leave you to find out for yourself 
whether he is wonderful or not." 

There was a touch of masculine irou}^ and 
humour about this that took my fancy ; and we 

went to the house, Miss saying that two new 

persons in one afternoon would be rather a strain 
for her uncle, much as he would enjoy it, and that 
his enjoyment must be severely limited. "His 
illness," she said, '*is an obscure one ; it is a want 
of adequate nervous force : the doctors give it 
names, but don't seem to be able to cure or re- 
lieve it ; he is strong, physically and mentally, but 
the least over-exertion or over-strain knocks him 
up ; it is as if virtue went out of him ; though 
a partial niece may say that he has a plentiful 
stock of the material." 

We went in, and proceeded to a small library, 
full of books, with a big writing-table in the win- 
dow. The room was somewhat dark, and the 
feet fell softly on a thick carpet. There was no 
sort of luxury about the room ; a single portrait 
hung over the mantelpiece, and there was no 
trace of ornament anywhere, except a big bowl 
of roses on a table. 



298 The Altar Fire 

Here, with a low table beside him covered with 
books, and a little reading-desk pushed aside, I 

found Mr. sitting. He was leaning forwards 

in his chair, and Maud was sitting opposite him. 
They appeared to be silent, but with the natural 
silence that comes of reflection, not the silence of 
embarrassment. Maud, I could see, was strangely 
moved. He rose up to greet me, a tall, thin figure, 
dressed in a rough grey suit. There was little sign 
of physical ill-health about him. He had a shock 
of thick, strong hair, perfectly white. His face 
was that of a man who lived much in the open 
air, clear and ascetic of complexion. He was not 
at all what would be called handsome ; he had 
rather heavy features, big, white eyebrows, and a 
white moustache. His manner was sedate and 
extremely unaffected, not hearty, but kindly, and 
he gave me a quick glance, out of his blue eyes, 
which seemed to take swift stock of me. *' It is 
very kind of you to come and see me," he said in 
a measured tone. " Of course I ought to have 
paid my respects first, but I ventured to take the 
privilege of age ; and moreover I am the obedient 
property of a very vigilant guardian, whose orders 
I implicitly obey — 'Do this, and he doeth it.' " 
He smiled at his niece as he said it, and she said, 



A Conversation 299 

" Yes, you would hardly believe how peremptory 
I can be ; and I am going to show it by taking 

Mrs. away, to show her the garden ; and in 

twenty minutes I must take Mr. away too, if 

he will be so kind as to help me to sustain my 
authority." 

The old man sate dov/n again, smiling, and 
pointed me to a chair. The other two left us ; 
and there followed what was to me a very memor- 
able conversation. " We must make the best use 
of our time, you see," he said, ''though I hope 
that this will not be the last time we shall meet. 
You will confer a very great obligation on me, if 
you can sometimes come to see me— and perhaps 
we may get a walk together occasionally. So we 
won't waste our time in conventional remarks," 
he added ; " I will only say that I am heartily 
glad you have come to live here, and I am sure 
you will find it a beautiful place — you are wise 
enough to prefer the country to the town, I 
gather." Then he went on : "I have read all 
your books — I did not read them, ' ' he added with 
a smile, "that I might talk to you about them, 
but because they have interested me. May I say 
that each book has been stronger and better than 
the last, except in one case "—he mentioned the 



300 The Altar Fire 

name of a book of mine — " in which 3^ou seemed 
to me to be republishing earlier work." " Yes," 
I said, " you are quite right ; I was tempted by a 
publisher and I fell." "Well," he said, "the 
book was a good one— and there is something 
that we lose as we grow older, a sort of youthful- 
ness, a courageous indiscretion, a beautiful free- 
dom of thought ; but we can't have everything, 
and one's books must take their appropriate 
colours from the mind. May I say that I think 
your books have grown more and more mature, 
tolerant, artistic, wise ? — and the last was simply 
admirable. It entirely engrossed me, and for a 
blessed day or two I lived in your mind, and saw 
out of 3'our eyes. I am sure it was a great book 
— a noble and a large-hearted book, full of insight 
and faith — the best kind of book." I murmured 
something; and he said, "You may think it is 
arrogant of me to speak like this ; but I have 
lived among books, and I am sure that I have 
a critical gift, mainly because I have no power of 
expression. You know the best kind of critics 
are the men who have tried to write books, and 
have failed, so long as their failure does not make 
them envious and ungenerous ; I have failed 
many times, but I think I admire good work 



A Confession 301 

all the more for that. You are writing now ? " 
** No," I said, " I am writing nothing." " Well, 
I am sorry to hear it," he said, " and may I ven- 
ture to ask why ? " " Simply because I cannot," 
I said ; and now there came upon me a strange 
feeling, the same sort of feeling that one has in 
answering the questions of a great and compas- 
sionate physician, who assumes the responsibility 
of one's case. Not only did I not resent these 
questions, as I should often have resented them, 
but it seemed to give me a sense of luxury and 
security to give an account of myself to this wise 
and unaffected old man. He bent his brows upon 
me : " You have had a great sorrow lately ?" 
he said. " Yes," I said, '' we have lost our only 
boy, nine years old." " Ah," he said, " a sore 
stroke, a sore stroke ! " and there was a deep 
tenderness in his voice that made me feel that 
I should have liked to kneel down before him, 
and weep at his knee, with his hand laid in bless- 
ing on my head. We sate in silence for a few 
moments. *' Is it this that has stopped your writ- 
ing ? " he said. '* No," I said, " the power had 
gone from me before — I could not originate, I 
could only do the same sort of work, and of 
weaker quality than before." ** Well," he said, 



302 The Altar Fire 

" I don't wonder ; the last book must have been 
a great strain, though I am sure you were happ3^ 
when you wrote it. I remember a friend of mine, 
a great Alpine climber, who did a marvellous feat 
of climbing some unapproachable peak — without 
any sense of fatigue, he told me, all pure enjoy- 
ment — but he had a heart- attack the next day, and 
paid the penalty of his enjoyment. He could not 
climb for some years after that." " Yes," I said, 
" I think that has been my case — but my fear is 
that if I lose the habit — and I seem to have lost 
it — I shall never be able to take it up again." 
"No, you need not fear that," he replied; "if 
something is given you to say, you will be able to 
say it, and say it better than ever — but no doubt 
you feel very much lost without it. How do you 
fill the time ? " "I hardly know, ' ' I said, ' ' not 
very profitably — I read, I teach my daughter, I 
muddle along." " Well," he said, smiling, ' ' the 
hours in which we muddle along are not our worst 
hours. You believe in God ? ' ' The suddenness 
of this question surprised me. " Yes," I said, " I 
believe in God. I cannot disbelieve. Something 
has placed me where I am, something urges me 
along ; there is a will behind me, I am sure of 
that. But I do not know whether that will is 



The Squire's Story 303 

just or unjust, kind or unkind, benevolent or 
indifferent. I have had much happiness and 
great prosperity, but I have had to bear also 
things which are inconceivably repugnant to me, 
things which seem almost satanically adapted to 
hurt and wound me in my tenderest and inner- 
most feelings, trials which seem to be concocted 
w4th an almost infernal appropriateness, not things 
which I could hope to bear with courage and faith, 
but things which I can only endure with rebel- 
lious resistance." "Yes," he said, *' I under- 
stand you perfectly ; but does not their very ap- 
propriateness, the satanical ingenuity of which 
you speak, help j^ou to feel that the}^ are not for- 
tuitous, but sent deliberately to yourself and to 
none other ? " " Yes," I said, " I see that ; but 
how can I believe in the justice of a discipline 
which 1 could not inflict, I will not say upon 
a dearly loved child, but upon the most relentless 
and stubborn foe." " Ah," said he, " now I see 
your heart bare, the very palpitating beat of the 
blood. Do you think you are alone in this ? L^et 
me tell you my own ston^ Over fifty years ago 
I left Oxford with, I really think I may say, 
almost everything before me — everything, that 
is, which is open to an instinctively cheerful. 



304 The Altar Fire 

temperate, capable, active man — I was not rich, 
but I could afford to wait to earn money. I was 
sociable and popular ; I was endowed with an im- 
mense appetite for variety of experience ; I don't 
think that there was anything which appeared 
to me to be uninteresting. But I could persevere 
too, I could stick to work, I had taken a good 
degree. Then an accidental fall off a chair, on 
which I was standing to get a book, laid me on 
my back for a time. I fretted over it at first, but 
when I got about again, I found that I was a man 
maimed for life. I don't know what the injury 
was— some obscure lesion of the spinal marrow 
or brain, I believe — some flaw about the size of a 
pin's head — the doctors have never made out. 
But every time that I plunged into work, I broke 
down ; for a long time I thought I should strug- 
gle through ; but at last I became aware that I 
was on the shelf, with other cracked jars, for life 
— I can't tell you what I went through, what 
agonies of despair and rebellion. I thought that 
at least literature was left me. I had always been 
fond of books, and was a good scholar, as it is 
called ; but I soon became aware that I had no 
gift of expression, and moreover that I could not 
hope to acquire it, because any concentrated effort 



The Problem 305 

threw me into illness. I was an ambitious fellow, 
and success was closed to me — I could not even 
hope to be useful. I tried several things, but 
always with the same result ; and at last I fell 
into absolute despair, and just lived on, praying 
daily and even hourly that I might die. But I 
did not die, and then at last it dawned upon me, 
like a lightening sunrise, that this was life for me ; 
this was my problem, these my limitations ; that I 
was to make the best I could out of a dulled and 
shattered life ; that I was to learn to be happy, 
even useful, in spite of it — that just as other peo- 
ple were given activity, practical energy, success, 
to learn from, them the right balance, the true 
proportion of life, and not to be submerged and 
absorbed in them, so to me was given a simpler 
problem still, to have all the temptations of activ- 
ity removed — temptations to which with my zest 
for experience I might have fallen an easy victim 
— and to keep my courage high, my spirit pure 
and expectant, if I could, waiting upon God. 
This little estate fell to me soon afterwards, and I 
soon saw what a tender gift it was, because it gave 
me a home ; every other source of interest and 
pleasure was removed, because the simplest visits, 
the mildest distractions were too much for me — 



3o6 The Altar Fire 

the jarring of any kind of vehicle upset me. By 
what slow degrees I attained happiness I can 
hardly say. But now, looking back, I see this — 
that whereas others have to learn by hard expe- 
rience, that detachment, self-purification, self-con- 
trol are the only conditions of happiness on earth, 
I was detached, purified, controlled by God Him- 
self. I was detached, because my life was utterly 
precarious, I was taught purification and control, 
because whereas more robust people can defer 
and even defy the penalties of luxury, comfort, 
gross desires, material pleasures, I was forced, 
every day and hour, to deny myself the smallest 
freedom — I was made ascetic by necessity. Then 
came a greater happiness still ; for years I was 
lost in a sort of individualistic self-absorption, with 
no thoughts of anything but God and His concern 
wdth myself — often hopeful and beautiful enough 
— when I found myself drawn into nearer and 
dearer relationships with those around me. That 
came through my niece, whom I adopted as an 
orphan child, and who is one of those people who 
live naturally and instinctively in the lives of 
other people. I got to know all the inhabitants of 
this little place — simple country people, you will 
say — but as interesting, as complex in emotion 



God's Purposes 307 

and intellect, as an 3^ other circle in the world. 
The only reason why one ever thinks people dull 
and limited, is because one does not know them ; 
if one talks directly and frankly to people, one 
passes through the closed doors at once. Looking 
back, I can see that I have been used by God, not 
with mere compassion and careless tenderness, 
but with an intent, exacting, momentary love, of 
an almost awful intensit}^ and intimacy. It is the 
same with all of us, if we can only see it. Our 
faults, our weaknesses, our qualities good or bad, 
are all bestowed with an anxious and deliberate 
care. The reason why some of us make shipwreck 
— and even that is mercifully and lovingly dis- 
pensed to us — is because we will not throw our- 
selves on the side of God at ever}^ moment. Every 
time that the voice says, ' Do this,' or * Leave that 
undone,' and we reply fretfully, ' Ah, but I have 
arranged otherwise,' we take a step backwards. 
He knocks daily, hourly, momently, at the door, 
and when we have once opened, and He is en- 
tered, we have no desire again but to do His will 
to the uttermost. ' ' He was silent for a moment, 
his eyes in-dwelling upon some secret thought; 
then he said, " Everything about you, your books, 
your dear wife, your words, your face, tell me that 



3o8 The Altar Fire 

you are very near indeed to the way — a step or 
two, and you are free ! " He sate back for a 
moment, as though exhausted, and then said : 
' ' You will forgive me for speaking so frankly, 
but I feel from hour to hour how short my time 
may be ; and I had no doubt when I saw you, 
even before I saw you, that I should have some 
message to give you, some tidings of hope and 
patience. ' ' 

I despair, as I write, of giving any idea of the 
impreSvSiveness of the old man ; now that I have 
written down his talk, it seems abrupt and even 
strained. It was neither. The perfect naturalness 
and tranquillity of it all, the fatherly smile, the 
little gestures of his frail hand, interpreted and 
filled up the gape, till I felt as though I had 
known him all my life, and that he was to me as 
a dear father, who saw my needs, and even loved 
me for what I was not and for what I might be. 

At this point Miss came in, and led me 

away. As Maud and I walked back, we spoke 
to each other of what we had seen and heard. 
He had talked to her, she said, very simply about 
Alec. "I don't know how it was," she added, 
"but I found myself telling him everything that 
was in my mind and heart, and it seemed as 



Enlightenment 309 

though he knew it all before." " Yes, indeed," 
I said, " he made me desire with all my heart to 
be different — and yet that is not true either, 
because he made me wish not to be something 
outside of myself, but something inside, some- 
thing that was there all the time ; I seem never 
to have suspected what religion was before ; it 
had always seemed to me a thing that one put on 
and wore, like a garment ; but now it seems to 
me to be the most natural, simple, and beautiful 
thing in the world ; to consist in being oneself, 
in fact." *' Yes, that is exactly it," said Maud, 
" I could not have put it into words, but that is 
how I feel." " Yes," I said, " I saw, in a flash, 
that life is not a series of things that happen to 
us, but our very selves. It is not a question of 
obeying, and doing, and acting, but a question of 
being. Well, it has been a wonderful experience ; 
and yet he told me nothing that I did not know. 
God in us, not God with us." And presently 

I added: " If I were never to see Mr. 

again, I should feel he had somehow done more 
for me than a hundred conversations and a 
thousand books. It was like the falling of the 
spirit at Pentecost." 

That strange sense of an uplifted freedom, of 



3IO The Altar Fire 

willing co-operation has dwelt with me, with us 
both, for many days. I dare not say that life has 
become easy ; that the cloud has rolled away ; 
that there have not been hours of dismay and 
dreariness and sorrow. But it is, I am sure, a 
turning-point of my life ; the way which has led 
me downwards, deepening and darkening, seems 
to have reached its lowest point, and to be ascend- 
ing from the gloom ; and all from the words of a 
simple, frail old man, sitting among his books 
in a panelled parlour, in a soft, summer after- 
noon. 



July lo, 1890. 
I have been sitting out, this hot, still afternoon, 
upon the lawn, under the shade of an old lime- 
tree, with its sweet scent coming and going in 
wafts, with the ceaseless murmur of the bees all 
about it ; but for that slumberous sound, the 
place was utterly still ; the sun lay warm on the 
old house, on the box hedges of the garden, on 
the rich foliage of the orchard. I have been lost 
in a strange dream of peace and thankfulness, 
only wishing the sweet hours could stay their 
course, and abide with me thus for ever. Part of 
the time Maggie sate with me, reading. We were 



The New Life 311 

both silent, but glad to be together ; every now 
and then she looked up and smiled at me. I was 
not even visited by the sense that used to haunt 
me, that I must bestir myself, do something, think 
of something. It is not that I am less active than 
formerly ; it is the reverse. I do a number of 
little things here, trifling things the}' would 
seem, not w^orth mentioning, mostly connected 
with the village or the parish. My writing has 
retired far into the past, like a sort of dream. I 
never even plan to begin again. I teach a little, 
not Maggie only, but some boys and girls of the 
place, who have left school, but are glad to be 
taught in the evenings. I hav^e plenty of good 
easy friends here, and have the blessed sense of 
feeling myself wanted. Best of all, a sense of 
poisonous hurry seems to have gone out of my 
life. In the old days I was always stretching on 
to something, the end of my book, the next book 
— never content with the present, always hoping 
that the future would bring me the satisfaction I 
seemed to miss. I did not always know it at the 
time, for I was often happy when I was writing 
a book — but it was, at best, a rushing, tortured 
sort of happiness. My great sorrow — what has 
that become to me ? A beautiful thing, full of 



312 The Altar Fire 

patience and hope. What but that has taught 
me to learn to live for the moment, to take the 
bitter experiences of life as the}^ come, not crush- 
ing out the sweetness and flinging the rind aside, 
but soberly, desirously, only eager to get from 
the moment what it is meant to bring. Even the 
very shrinking back from a bitter duty, the indo- 
lent rejection of the thought that touches one's 
elbow, bidding one again and again arise and go, 
means something ; to defer one's pleasure, to 
break the languid dream, to take up the tiny task, 
what strength is there ! Thus no burden seems 
too heavy, too awkward, too slipper}^ too ill- 
shaped, but one can lift it. The yoke is easy, 
because one bears it in quiet confidence, not 
overtaxing ability or straining hope. Instead of 
watching life, as from high castle windows, feel- 
ing it common and unclean, not to be mingled 
with, I am in it and of it. And what is become 
of all my old dreams of art, of the secluded 
worship, the lonely rapture ! Well, it is all 
there, somehow, flowing inside life, like a stream 
that is added to a river, not like a leaf drawn 
aside from the current. The force I spent on art 
has gone to swell life and augment it ; it heightens 
perception, it intensifies joy — it was the fevered 



The Soul's Growth 313 

lust of expression that drained the vigour of my 
days and hours. 

But am I then satisfied with the part I play ? 
Do I feel that my faculties are being used, that I 
am lending a hand to the great sum of toil ? I 
used to feel that, or thought I felt it, in the old 
days, but now I see that I walked in a vain delu- 
sion, serving my own joy, my own self-importance. 
Not that I think my old toil all ill-spent ; that was 
my work before, as surely as it is not now ; but 
the old intentness, the old watching for tone and 
gesture, for action and situation, that has all 
shifted its gaze, and waits upon God. It maj^ be, 
nay it is certain, that I have far to go, much to 
learn ; but now that I may perhaps recover my 
strength, life spreads out into sunny shallows, 
moving slow and clear. It is like a soft sweet 
interlude between two movements of fire and 
glow ; for I see now, what then I could not see, 
that something in my life was burnt and shrivelled 
up in my enforced silence and in my bitter loss — 
then, when I felt my energies at their lowest, 
when mind and bodily frame alike flapped loose, 
like a flag of smut upon the bars of a grate, I was 
living most intensely, and the soul's wings grew 
fast, unfolding plume and feather. It was then 



314 The Altar Fire 

that life burnt with its fiercest heat, when it 
withdrew me, faintly struggling, away from all 
that pleased and caressed the mind and the body, 
into the silent glow of the furnace. Strange that 
I should not have perceived it ! But now I see 
in all maimed and broken lives, the lives that 
seem most idle and helpless, most futile and vain, 
that the same fierce flame is burning bright about 
them ; that the reason why they cannot spread 
and flourish, like flowers, in the free air, is 
because the strong roots are piercing deep, en- 
twining themselves firmly among the stones, 
piercing the cold silent crevices of the earth. 
Ay, indeed ! The coal in the furnace, burning 
passively and hotly, is as much a force, though 
it but lies and suffers, as the energy that throbs 
in the leaping piston-rod or the rushing wheel. 
Not in success and noise and triumph does the 
soul grow ; when the body rejoices, when the 
mind is prodigal of seed, the spirit sits within in 
a darkened chamber, like a folded chrysalis, stiff 
as a corpse, in a faint dream. But when triumphs 
have no savour, when the cheek grows pale and 
the eye darkens, then the dark chrysalis opens, 
and the rainbow wings begin to spread and glow, 
uncrumpling to the suns of paradise. My soul 



Maud 315 

has taken wings, and sits poised and delicate, 
faint with long travail, perhaps to hover awhile 
about the garden blooms and the chalices of 
honied flowers, perhaps to take her flight beyond 
the glade, over the forest, to the home of her de- 
sirous heart. I know not ! Yet in these sunlit 
hours, with the slow, strong pulse of life beating 
round me, it seems that something is preparing 
for one struck dumb and crushed with sorrow to 
the earth. How soft a thrill of hope throbs in 
the summer air ! How the bird-voices in the 
thicket, and the rustle of burnished leaves, and 
the hum of insects, blend into a secret harmony, 
a cadence half- heard ! I wait in love and con- 
fidence ; and through the trees of the garden One 
seems ever to draw nearer, walking in the cool of 
the day, at whose bright coming the flowers look 
upwards unashamed. Shall I be bidden to meet 
Him ! Will He call me loud or low ? 

August 25, 1S90. 
Maud has been ailing of late — how much it is 
impossible to say, because she is always cheerful 
and indomitable. She never complains, she never 
neglects a duty ; but I have found her, several 
times of late, sitting alone, unoccupied, musing — 



3i6 The Altar Fire 

that is unlike her — and with a certain shadow 
upon her face that I do not recognise ; but the 
strange, new, sweet companionship in which we 
live seems at the vSame time to have heightened 
and deepened. I seem to have lived so close to 
her all these years, and yet of late to have found 
a new and different personality in her which I 
never suspected. Perhaps we have both changed 
somewhat ; I do not feel the difference in myself. 
But there is something larger, stronger, deeper, 
about Maud now, as if she had ascended into a 
purer air, and caught sight of some unexpected, 
undreamed-of distance ; but instead of giving her 
remoteness, she seems to be sharing her wider 
outlook with me ; vshe was never a great talker — 
perhaps it was that in old days my own mind 
ran like an ebullient fountain, evoking no definite 
response, needing no interchange ; but she was 
always a sayer of penetrating things. She has 
a wonderful gift of seeing the firm issue through 
a cloud of mixed suggestions ; but of late there 
has been a richness, a generosity, a wisdom about 
her which I have never recognised before. I 
think, with contrition, that I under-estimated, not 
her judgment or instinct, but her intellect. I am 
sure I lived too much in the intellectual region, 



The Sanctuary of the Soul 317 

and did not guess how little it really solves, in 
what a limited region it disports itself. I see that 
this wisdom was hers all along, and that I have 
been blind to it ; but now that I have travelled 
out of the intellectual region, I perceive what a 
much greater thing that further wisdom is than 
I had thought. Living in art and for art, I used 
to believe that the intellectual structure was the 
one thing that mattered, but now I perceive dimly 
that the mind is but on the threshold of the soul ; 
and that the artist may, nay does, often perceive, 
by virtue of his trained perception, what is going 
on in the sanctuary ; but he is as one who kneels 
in a church at some great solemnity — he sees the 
movements and gestures of the priests ; he sees 
the holy rite proceeding, he hears the sacred 
words ; something of the inner spirit of it all 
flows out to him ; but the viewless current of 
prayer, the fiery ray streaming down from God, 
that smites itself into the earthly symbol — all this 
is hidden from him. Those priests, intent upon 
the sacred work, feel something that they not 
only do not care to express, but which they 
would not if they could ; it would be a profana- 
tion of the awful mystery. The artist is not 
profane in expressing what he perceives, because 



1 8 The Altar Fire 



he can be the interpreter of the symbol to others 
more remote ; but he is not a real partaker of the 
mystery ; he is a seer of the word and not a doer. 
What now amazes me is that Maud, to whom the 
heart of the matter, the inner emotion, has always 
been so real, could fling herself, and all for love 
of me, into the outer work of intellectual ex- 
pression. I have always, God forgive me, be- 
lieved my work to be in some way superior to 
hers. I lo^ ed her truly, but with a certain con- 
descension of mind, as one loves a child or a 
flower ; and now I see that she has been serenely 
ahead of me all the time, and it has been she that 
has helped me along ; I have been as the spoilt 
and wilful child, and she as the sweet and wise 
mother, who has listened to its prattle, and 
thrown herself, with all the infinite patience of 
love, into the tiny bounded dreams. I have told 
her all this as simply as I could, and though she 
deprecated it all generously and humbly, I feel 
the blessed sense of having caught her up upon 
the way, of seeing — how dimly and imperfectly ! 
— what I have owed her all along. 1 am over- 
whelmed with a shame which it is a sweet 
pleasure to confess to her ; and now that I can 
spare her a little, anticipate her wishes, save her 



A Shadow 319 

trouble, it is an added joy ; a service that I can 
render and which she loves to receive. I never 
thought of these things in the old days ; she had 
always planned everything, arranged everything 
forestalled everything. 

I have at last persuaded her to come up to town 
and see a doctor. We plan to go abroad for a 
time. I would earn the means if I could, but, if 
not, we will sacrifice a little of our capital, and I 
will replace it, if I can, by some hack-work ; 
though I have a di.slike of being paid for my name 
and reputation, and not my best work. 

I am not exactly anxious ; it is all so slight, 
what they call a want of tone, and she has been 
through so much ; even so, my anxiety is con- 
quered by the joy of being able to serve her a little; 
and that joy brings us together, hour by hour. 

September 6, 1890. 
Again the shadow comes down over my life. 
The doctor says plainly that Maud's heart is 
weak ; but he adds that there is nothing organic- 
ally wrong, though she must be content to live 
the life of an invalid for a time ; he was reassuring 
and quiet ; but I cannot keep a dread out of my 
mind, though Maud herself is more serene than 



320 The Altar Fire 

she has been for a long time ; she says that she 
was aware that she was somehow overtaxing 
herself, and it is a comfort to be forbidden, in so 
many words, to abstain a little. We are to live 
quietly at home for a while, until she is stronger, 
and then we shall go abroad. 

Maud does not come down in the mornings 
now, and she is forbidden to do more than take the 
shortest stroll. I read to her a good deal in the 
mornings ; Maggie has proudly assumed the 
functions of housekeeper ; the womanly instinct 
for these things is astonishing. A man would far 
sooner not have things comfortable, than have the 
trouble of providing them and seeing about them. 
Women do not care about comforts for themselves ; 
they prefer haphazard meals, trays brought into 
rooms, vague arrangements; and yet they seem to 
know by instinct what a man likes, even though 
he does not express it, and though he would not 
take any trouble to secure it. What centuries 
of trained instincts must have gone to produce 
this. The new order has given me a great deal 
more of Maggie's society. We are sent out in the 
afternoon, because Maud likes to be quite alone to 
receive the neighbours, small and great, that come 
to see her, now that she cannot go to see them. 



Maggie 321 

She tells me frankl}^ that my presence only em- 
barrasses them. And thus another joy has come 
to me, one of the most beautiful things that has 
ever happened to me in my life, and which I can 
hardly find words to express — the contact with, 
the free sight of the mind and soul of an absolutely 
pure, simple, and ingenuous girl. Maggie's mind 
has opened like a flower. She talks to me with 
perfect openness of all she feels and thinks ; to 
walk thus, hour by hour, with my child's arm 
through my own, her wide-opened, beautiful eyes 
looking in mine, her light step beside me, with all 
her pretty caressing ways — it seems to me a taste 
of the purest and sweetest love I have ever felt. 
It is like the rapture of a lover, but without any 
shadow of the desirous element that mingles so 
fiercely and thirstily with our mortal loves, to find 
myself dear to her. I have a poignant hunger of 
the heart to save her from any touch of pain, to 
smooth her path for her, to surround her with 
beauty and sweetness. I did not guess that the 
world held any love quite like this ; there seems 
no touch of selfishness about it ; my love lavishes 
itself, asking for nothing in return, except that I 
may be dear to her as she to me. 

Her fancies, her hopes her dreams — how inex- 



322 The Altar Fire 

plicable, how adorable ! She said to me to-day 
that she could never marry, and that it was a real 
pity that she could not have children of her own 
without. " We don't want any one else, do we, 
except some little children to amuse us." She is 
a highly imaginative child, and one of our amuse- 
ments is to tell each other long interminable tales 
of the adventures of a family we call the Pick- 
fords. I have lost all count of their names and 
ages, their comings and goings; but Maggie 
never makes a mistake about them, and they 
seem to her like real people ; and when I some- 
times plunge them into disaster, she is so deeply 
affected that the disasters have all to be softly re- 
paired. The Pickfords must have had a very 
happy life ; the kind of life that people created 
and watched over by a tender, patient, and de- 
tailed Providence might live. How different from 
the real world ! 

But I don't want Maggie to live in the real 
world yet awhile. It will all come pouring in 
upon her, sorrow, anxiety, weariness, no doubt — 
alas, that it should be so ! Perhaps some people 
would blame me, would say that more discipline 
would be bracing, wholesome, preparatory. But 
I don't believe that. I had far rather that she 



Stroke upon Stroke 323 

learnt that life was tender, gentle, and sweet — and 
then if she has to face trouble, she will have the 
strength of feeling that the tenderness, gentleness, 
and sweetness are the real stuff of life, waiting for 
her behind the cloud. I don't want to disillusion 
her ; I want to establish her faith in happiness 
and love, so that it cannot be shaken. That is a 
better philosophy, when all is said and done, than 
the stoical fortitude that anticipates dreariness, 
that draws the shadow over the sun, that over- 
values endurance. One endures by instinct ; but 
one must be trained to love. 

February 6, 1891. 
It is months since I have opened this book ; it 
has lain on my table all through the dreadful 
hours — I write the word down conventionally, 
and yet it is not the right word at all, because I 
have merely been stunned and numbed. I simply 
could not suffer any more. I smiled to myself, as 
the man in the story, who was broken on the 
wheel, smiled when they struck the seconc". and 
the third blow. I knew why he smiled ; it was 
because he had dreaded it so much, and when it 
came there was nothing to dread, because he 
simpl}^ did not feel it. 



324 The Altar Fire 

To-night I just pick up idly the dropped thread. 
Perhaps it is a sign, this faint desire to make a 
little record, of the first tingling of returning life. 
Something stirs in me, and I will not resist it ; it 
may be read by some one that comes after me, by 
some one perhaps who feels that his own grief is 
supreme and unique, and that no one has ever 
suffered so before. He may learn that there have 
been others in the dark valley before him, that the 
mist is full of pilgrims stumbling on, falling, rising 
again, falling again, lying stupefied in a silence 
which is neither endurance nor patience. 

Maud was taken from me first ; she went with- 
out a word or a sigh. She was better that day, 
she declared, than she had felt for some time ; she 
was on the upward grade. She walked a few 
hundred yards with Maggie and myseif, and then 
she went back ; the last sight I had of her alive 
was when she stood at the corner and waved her 
hand to us as we went out of sight. I am glad I 
looked round and saw her smile. I had not the 
smallest or faintest premonition of what was com- 
ing ; indeed, I was lighter of mood than I had 
been for some time. We came in ; we were told 
that she was tired and had gone up to lie down. 
As she did not come down to tea, I went up and 



The Shock to Maggie 325 

found her lying on her bed, her head upon her 
hand — dead. The absolute peace and stillness of 
her attitude showed us that she had herself felt no 
access of pain. She had lain down to rest, and she 
had rested indeed. Even at my worst and loneli- 
est, I have been able to be glad that it was even 
so. If I could know that I should die thus in joy 
and tranquillit}' , is would be a great load off my 
mind. 

But the grief, the shock to Maggie was too much 
for my dear, love-nurtured child. A sort of awful 
and desperate strength came on me after that ; I 
felt somehow, day by day, that I must just put 
away my own grief till a quiet hour, in order that 
I might sustain and guard the child ; but her 
heart was broken, I think, though they say that 
no one dies of sorrow. She lay long ill — so utterly 
frail, so appealing in her grief, that I could think 
of nothing but saving her. Was it a kind of self- 
ishness that needed to be broken down in me ? 
Perhaps it was ! Every single tendril of my 
heart seemed to grow round the child and clasp 
her close ; she was all that I had left, and in 
some strange way she seemed to be all that I had 
lost too. And then she faded out of life, not 
knowing that she was fading, but simply too tired 



326 The Altar Fire 

to live ; and my desire alone seemed to keep her 
with me. Till at last, seeing her weariness and 
weakness, I let my desire go ; I yielded, I gave 
her to God, and He took her, as though He had 
waited for my consent. 

And now that I am alone, I will say, with such 
honesty as I can muster, that I have no touch of 
self-pity, no rebellion. It is all too deep and dark 
for that. I am not strong enough even to wish to 
die ; I have no wishes, no desires at all. The 
three seem for ever about me, in mj' thoughts 
and in my dreams. When Alec died, I used to 
wake up to the fact, day after day, with a trem- 
bling dismay. Now it is not like that. I can 
give no account of what I do. The smallest 
things about me seem to take up my mind. I 
can sit for an hour by the hearth, neither reading 
nor thinking, just watching the flame flicker over 
the coals, or the red heart of the fire eating its 
way upwards and outwards. I can sit on a sun- 
shiny morning in the garden, merely watching 
with a strange intentness what goes on about me, 
the uncrumbling leaf, the snowdrop pushing from 
the mould, the thrush searching the lawn, the 
robin slipping from bough to bough, the shapes 
of the clouds, the dying ray. I seem to have no 



Alone 12"] 

motive either to live or to die. I retrace in mem- 
ory my walks with Maggie, I can see her floating 
hair, and how she leaned to me ; I can sit as I 
used to sit reading, by Maud's side, and see her 
face changing as the book's mood changed, her 
clear eye, her strong delicate hands. I seem as 
if I had awaked from a long and beautiful 
dream. People sometimes come and see me, and 
I can see the pity in their faces and voices ; I can 
see it in the anxious care with which my good 
servants surround me ; but I feel that it is half 
disingenuous in me to accept it, because I need 
no pity. Perhaps there is something left for 
me to do in the world ; there seems no reason 
otherwise why I should linger here. 

Mr. has been very good to me ; I have 

seen him almost daily. He seems the only per- 
son who perfectly understands. He has hardly 
said a word to me about my sorrow. He said 
once that lie should not speak of it ; before, he 
said, I was like a boy learning a lesson with the 
help of another boy, but that now I was being 
taught by the Master Himself. That may be so ; 
but the Master has a very scared and dull pupil, 
alas, who cannot even discern the letters. I care 
nothing whether God be pleased or displeased ; I 



328 The Altar Fire 

bear His will, without either pain or resistance. 
I simply feel as if there had been some vast and 
overwhelming mistake somewhere ; a mistake so 
incredible and inconceivable that nothing else 
mattered ; as if — I do not speak profanely — God 
Himself were appalled at what He had done, and 
dared not smite further one whom He had stunned 
into silence and apathy. 

With Mr. I talk ; he talks of simple, quiet 

things, of old books and thoughts. He tells me, 
sometimes, when I am too weary to speak, long, 
beautiful, quiet stories of his younger days, and 
I listen like a child to his grave voice, only sorry 
when it comes to an end. So the days pass, and 
I will not say I have no pleasure in them, because 
I have won back a sort of odd childish pleasure 
in small incidents, sights, and sounds. The part 
of me that can feel seems to have been simply 
cut gently away, and I live in the hour, just glad 
when the sun is out, sorry when it is dull and 
cheerless. 

I read the other day one of my old books, and 
I could not believe it was mine. It seemed like 
the voice of some one I had once known long 
ago, in a golden hour. I was amused and sur- 
prised at my own quickness and inventiveness, at 



Waiting 329 

the confidence with which I interpreted every- 
thing so glibly and easily, I cannot interpret 
any more, and I do not seem to desire to do so. 
I seem to wait, with a half-amused smile, to see 
if God can make anything out of the strange 
tangle of things, as a child peers in within a scaf- 
folding, and sees nothing but a forest of poles, 
little rising walls of chambers, a crane swinging 
weights to and fro. What can ever come, he 
thinks, out of such strange confusion, such fruit- 
less hurry ? 

Well, I will not write any more ; a sense of 
weariness and futility comes over me. I will go 
back to my garden to see what I can see, only 
dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not re- 
quired of me to perform any dull and monotonous 
task, which would interrupt my idle dreams. 

February 8, 1891. 
I tried this morning to look through some of 
the old letters and papers in Maud's cabinet. 
There were my own letters, carefully tied up with 
a ribbon ; letters from her mother and father ; 
from the children when we were away from them. 
I began to read, and was seized with a sharp, 
unreasoning pain, surprised by sudden tears. I 



330 The Altar Fire 

seemed dumbly to resent this, and I put them all 
away again. Why should I disturb myself to no 
purpose ? * ' There shall be no more sorrow nor 
crying, for the former things are passed away " — 
so runs the old verse, and I had almost grown to 
feel like that. Why distrust it ? Yet I could not 
forbear. I got the papers out again, and read 
late into the night, like one reading an old and 
beautiful story. Suddenly the curtain lifted, and 
I saw myself alone, I saw what I had lost. The 
ineffectual agony I endured, cr5dng out for very 
loneliness ! * * That was all mine, ' ' said the melt- 
ing heart, so long frozen and dumb. Grief, in 
waves and billows, began to beat upon me like 
breakers on a rock-bound shore. A strange fever 
of the spirit came on me, scenes and figures out 
of the years floating fiercely and boldly past me. 
Was my strength and life sustained for this, that 
I should just sleep awhile, and wake to fall into 
the pit of suffering, far deeper than before ? 

If they could but come back to me for a 
moment ; if I could feel Maud's cheek by mine, 
or Maggie's arms around my neck ; if they could 
but stand by me smiling, in robes of light ! Yet 
as in a vision I seem to see them leaning from a 
window, in a blank castle- wall rising from a misty 



A Vision 331 

abyss, scanning a little stairway that rises out of 
the clinging fog, built up through the rocks and 
ending in a postern gate in the castle-wall. Upon 
that stairway, one by one emerging from the mist, 
seem to stagger and climb the figures of men, 
entering in, one by one, and the three, with smiles 
and arms interlaced, are watching eagerly. Can- 
not I climb the stair ? Perhaps even now I am 
close below them, where the mist hangs damp on 
rock and blade ? Cannot I set myself free ? No, 
I could not look them in the face, they would hide 
their eyes from me, if I came in hurried flight, in 
passionate cowardice. Not so must I come be- 
fore them, if indeed they wait for me. 

The morning was coming in about the dewy 
garden, the birds piping faint in thicket and 
bush, when I stumbled slowl}', dizzied and help- 
less, to my bed. Then a troubled sleep ; and 
ah, the bitter waking ; for at last I knew what I 
had lost. 

February lo, 1891. 

*' All things become plain to us," said the good 

vicar, pulling on his gloves, "when we once 

realise that God is love — Perfect Love ! " He 

said good-bye ; he trudged off to his tea, a try- 



Zo'^ The Altar Fire 

ing visit manfully accomplished, leaving me 
alone. 

He had sate with me, good, kindly man, for 
twenty minutes. There were tears in his eyes, 
and I valued that little sign of human fellowship 
more than all the commonplaces he courageously 
enunciated. He talked in a soft, low tone, as if I 
was ill. He made no allusions to mundane things ; 
and I am grateful to him for coming. He had 
dreaded his call, I am sure, and he had done it 
from a mixture of affection and duty, both good 
things. 

' ' Perfect Love, yes — if we could feel that ! " I 
sate musing in my chair. 

I saw, as in a picture, a child brought up in a 
beautiful and stately house by a grave strong 
man, who lavished at first love and tenderness, 
ease and beauty, on the child, laughing with 
him, and making much of him ; all of which the 
child took unconsciously, unthinkingly, knowing 
nothing different ; running to meet his guardian, 
glad to be with him, sorry to leave him. 

Then I saw in my parable that one day, when 
the child played in the garden, as he had often 
played before, he noticed a little green alley, with 
a pleasant arch of foliage, that he had never seen 



A Parable 333 

before, leading to some secluded place. The 
child was dimly aware that there were parts of 
the garden where he was supposed not to go ; he 
had been told he must not go too far from the 
house, but it was all vague and indistinct in his 
mind ; he had never been shown anything pre- 
cisely, or told the limits of his wanderings. So 
he went in joy, with a .sense of a sweet mystery, 
down the alley, and presently found himself in a 
still brighter and more beautiful garden, full of 
fruits growing on the ground and on the trees, 
which he plucked and ate. There was a building, 
like a pavilion, at the end, of two storeys ; and 
while he wandered thither with his hands full of 
fruits, he suddenly saw his guardian watching 
him, with a look he had never seen on his face be- 
fore, from the upper window of the garden-house. 
His first impulse was to run to him, share his joy 
with him, and ask him why he had not been 
shown the delicious place ; but the fixed and in- 
scrutable look on his guardian's face, neither 
smiling nor frowning, the stillness of his attitude, 
first chilled the child and then dismayed him ; 
he flung the fruits on the ground and shivered, 
and then ran out of the garden. In the evening, 
when he was with his guardian, he found him as 



334 The Altar Fire 

kind and tender as ever. But his guardian said 
nothing to him about the inner garden of fruits, 
and the child feared to ask him. 

But the next day he felt as though the fruits 
had given him a new eagerness, a new strength ; 
he hankered after them long, and at last went 
down the green path again ; this time the summer- 
house seemed empty. So he ate his fill, and this 
he did for many days. Then one day, when he 
was bending down to pluck a golden fruit, that 
lay gem-like on the ground among green leaves, 
he heard a sudden step behind him, and turning, 
saw his guardian draw swiftly near, with a look 
of anger on his face ; the next instant he was 
struck down, again and again ; lifted from the 
ground at last, as in a passion of rage, and flung 
down bleeding on the earth ; and then, without a 
word, his guardian left him ; at first he lay and 
moaned, but then he crawled away, and back to 
the house. And there he found the old nurse 
that tended him, who greeted him with tears and 
words of comfort, and cared for his hurts. And 
he asked her the reason of his hard usage, but 
she could tell him nothing, only saying that it was 
the master's will, and that he sometimes did thus, 
though she thought he was merciful at heart. 



The Child and the Garden 335 

The child lay sick many days, his guardian still 
coming to him and sitting with him, with gentle 
talk and tender offices, till the scene in the garden 
was like an evil dream ; but as his guardian spoke 
no word of displeasure to the child, the child still 
feared to ask him, and only strove to forget And 
then at last he was well enough to go out a little ; 
but a few days after — he avoided the inner garden 
now out of a sort of horror — he was sitting in the 
sun, near the house, feebly trying to amuse him- 
self with one of his old games — how poor they 
seemed after the fruits of the inner paradise, how 
he hankered desirously after the further place, 
with its hot, sweet, fragrant scents, its rich juices ! 
— when again his guardian came upon him in a 
sudden wrath, and struck him many times, dash- 
ing him down to the ground ; and again he crept 
home, and lay long ill, and again his guardian 
was un weary ingly kind ; but now a sort of horror 
of the man grew up in the mind of the child, and 
he feared that his strange anger might break out 
at any moment in a storm of blows. 

And at last he was well again ; and had half 
forgotten, in the constant kindness, and even 
merriment, of his guardian, the horror of the two 
assaults. He was out and about again ; he 



33^ The Altar Fire 

still shunned the paradise of fruits, but wearying 
of the accustomed pleasaunce, he went further and 
passed into the wood ; how cool and mysterious 
it was among the great branching trees ! the 
forest led him onwards ; now the sun lay softly 
upon it, and a stream bickered through a glade, 
and now the path lay through thickets, which 
hid the further woodland from view ; and now 
passing out into a more open space, he had a 
thrill of joy and excitement ; there was a herd of 
strange living creatures grazing there, great deer 
with branching horns ; they moved slowly for- 
wards, cropping the grass, and the child waslostin 
wonder at the sight. Presently one of them stopped 
feeding, began to sniff the air, and then looking 
round, espied the child, and began slowly to ap- 
proach him. The child had no terror of the great 
dappled stag, and held out his hand to him, 
when the great beast suddenly bent his head 
down, and was upon him with one bound, strik- 
ing him with his horns, lifting him up, smiting 
him with his pointed hoofs. Presently the 
child, in his terror and faintness, became aware 
that the beast had left him, and he began to drag 
himself, all bruised as he was, along the glade ; 
then he suddenly saw his guardian approaching, 



The Child 337 

and cried out to him, holding out his hands for 
help and comfort — and his guardian strode 
straight up to him, and, with the same fierce 
anger in his face, struck at him again and again, 
and spurned him with his feet. And then, when 
he left him, the child at last, with accesses of 
deadly faintness and pain, crept back home, to 
be again tended b}- the old nurse, who wept over 
him ; and the child found that his guardian came 
to visit him, as kind and gentle as ever. And at 
last one day when he sate beside the child, hold- 
ing his hand, stroking his hair, and telling him 
an old tale to comfort him, the child summoned 
up courage to ask him a question about the gar- 
den and the wood ; but at the first word his 
guardian dropped his hand, and left him without 
a word. 

And then the child lay and mused with fierce 
and rebellious thoughts. He said to himself, ' ' If 
my guardian had told me where I might not go ; 
if he had said to me, * in the inner garden are 
unwholesome fruits, and in the wood are savage 
beasts ; and though I am strong and powerful, 
yet I have not strength enough to root up the 
poisonous plants and make the place a wilder- 
ness ; and I cannot put a fence about it, or a fence 



338 The Altar Fire 

about the wood, that no one should enter ; but I 
warn you that you must not enter, and I entreat 
you for the love I bear you not to go thither, ' ' 
then the child thought that he would not have 
made question, but would have obeyed him wil- 
lingly, and again he thought that, if he had in- 
deed ventured in, and had eaten of the evil fruits 
and been wounded by the savage stag, yet if his 
guardian had comforted him, and prayed him 
lovingly not to enter to his hurt, that then he 
would have loved his guardian more abundantly 
and carefully. And bethought too that, if his 
guardian had ever smitten him in wrath, and had 
then said to him with tears that it had grieved 
him bitterly to hurt him, but that thus and thus 
only could he learn the vileness of the place then 
he would have not only forgiven the ill-usage, but 
would even have loved to endure it patiently. 
But what the child could not understand was that 
his guardian should now be tender and gracious, 
and at another time hard and cruel, explaining 
nothing to him. And thus the child said to him- 
self, "I am in his power, and he must do his 
will upon me ; but I neither trust nor love him, 
for I cannot see the reason of what he does ; 
though if he would but tell me the reason, I 



The Child 339 

could obey liim and submit to him joyfully." 
These hard thoughts he nourished and fed upon ; 
and his guardian came no more to him for good or 
for evil ; and the child, much broken by his hard 
usage and his angry thoughts, crept about neg- 
lected and spiritless, with nothing but fear and 
dismay in his heart. 

So the imagination shaped itself in my mind, a 
parable of the sad, strange life of man. 

" Perfect Love ! " If it were indeed that ? Yet 
God does many things to His frail children, 
which if a man did, I could not believe him to be 
loving ; though if He would but give us the 
assurance that it was all leading us to happiness, 
we could endure His fiercest stroke, His bitterest 
decree. But He smites us, and departs; He 
turns away in a rage, because we have broken a 
law that we knew not of. And again, when we 
seem most tranquil and blest, most inclined to 
trust Him utterl}^, He smites us down again with- 
out a word. I hope, I yearn to see that it all 
comes from some great and perfect will, a will 
with qualities of w^hich w^hat we know as mercy, 
justice, and love are but faint shadows — but that 
is hidden from me. We cannot escape, we must 
bear what God lays upon us. We may fling 



340 The Altar Fire 

ourselves into bitter and dark rebellion ; still He 
spares us or strikes us, gives us sorrow or delight. 
My one hope is to co-operate with Him, to accept 
the chastening joyfully and courageously. Then 
He takes from me joy, and courage alike, till I 
know not whom I serve, a Father or a tyrant. 
Can it indeed help us to doubt whether He be 
tyrant or no ? Again I know not, and again I 
sicken in fruitless despair, like one caught in a 
great labyrinth of crags and precipices. 

February 14, 1891. 
Then the Christian teacher saj^s : "God has 
given you a will, an independent will to act and 
choose; put it in unison with His will." Alas, 
I know not how much of my seeming liberty is 
His or mine. He seems to make me able to 
exert my will in some directions, able to make it 
effective ; and yet in other matters, even though 
I see that a course is holy and beautiful, I have 
no power to follow it at all. I see men some 
more, some less hampered than myself. Some 
seem to have no desire for good, no dim percep- 
tion of it. The outcast child, brought up cruelly 
and foully, with vile inheritances, he is not free, 
as I use the word ; sometimes, by some inner 



The Failing Will 341 

purity and strength, he struggles upwards ; most 
often he is engulfed ; yet it is all a free gift, to 
me much, to another little, to some nothing at 
all. With all my heart do I wish my will to be 
in harmony with His. I yield it up utterly to 
Him. I have no strength or force, and He with- 
holds them from me. I do not blame, I only ask 
to understand ; He has given me understanding, 
and has put in my heart a high dream of justice 
and love ; why will He not show me that He 
satisfies the dream ? I say with the old Psalmist, 
" Lo, I come," but He comes not forth to meet 
me ; He does not even seem to discern me when 
I am yet a long way off, as the father in the 
parable discerned his erring son. 

Then the Christian teacher says to me that all 
is revealed in Christ ; that He reconciles, not an 
angry God to a wilful world, but a grieved and 
outraged world to a God who cannot show them 
He is love. 

Yet Christ said that God was all-merciful and 
all-loving, and that He ordered the very falling 
of a single hair of our heads. But if God ordered 
that, then He did not leave unordered the 
qualities of our hearts and wills, and our very 
sins are of His devising. 



342 The Altar Fire 

No, it is all dark and desperate ; I do not 
know, I cannot know ; I shall stumble to my end 
in ignorance ; sometimes glad when a gleam of 
sunshine falls on my wearied limbs, sometimes 
wrapping my garments around me in cold and 
drenching rain. I am in the hand of God ; I 
know that ; and I hope that I may dare to trust 
Him ; but my confidence is shaken as He passes 
over me, as the reed in the river shakes in the 
wind. 

February i8, 1891. 

A still February day, with a warm, steady sun, 
which stole in and caressed me, enveloping me in 
light and warmth, as 1 sate reading this morning. 
If I could be ashamed of anything, I should be 
ashamed of the fact that my body has all day 
long surprised me by a sort of indolent content- 
ment, repeating over and over that it is glad to be 
alive. The mind and soul crave for death and 
silence. Yet all the while my faithful and useful 
friend, the body, seems to croon a low song of 
delight. That is the worst of it, that I seem 
built for many years of life. Shall I learn to 
forget ? 

I walked long and far among the fields, in the 



The Lambing-Fold 343 

fresh, sun-warmed air. Ah ! the sweet world ! 
Everything was at its baiest and austerest— the 
grass thin in the pastures, the copses leafless. 
But such a sense of hidden life everywhere ! I 
stood long beside the gate to watch the new-born 
lambs, whose cries thrilled plaintively on the air, 
like the notes of a violin. Little black-faced 
grey creatures, on their high, stilt-like legs— a 
week or two old, and yet able to walk, to gambol, 
to rejoice, in their way, to reflect. The bleating 
mothers moved about, divided between a deep 
desire to eat, and the anxious care of their young- 
lings. One of them stood over her sleeping lamb, 
stamping her feet, to dismay me, no doubt, while 
the little creature lay Hke a folded door-mat on 
the pasture. Another brutally repelled the ad- 
vances of a strange lamb, butting it over whenever 
it drew near ; another chewed the cud, while its 
lamb sucked, its eyes half closed in contented joy, 
just turning from time to time to sniff at the little 
creature pressed close to its side. I felt as if I 
had never seen the sight before, this wonderful 
and amazing drama of life, beginning again year 
after year, the same, yet not the same. 

The old shepherd came out with his crook, 
said a few words to me, and moved off, the ewes 



344 The Altar Fire 

following him, the lambs skipping behind. " He 
shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me 
forth beside the waters of comfort." How per- 
fectly beautiful and tender the image, a thing 
seen how many hundred years ago on the hills of 
Bethlehem, and touching the old heart just as it 
touches me to-day ! 

And yet, alas, to me to-day the image seems to 
miss the one thing needful ; how all the images 
of guide and guardian and shepherd fail when 
applied to God ! For here the shepherd is but a 
little wiser, a little stronger than his flock. He 
sees their difficulties, he feels them himself. But 
with God, He is at once the Guide, and the 
Creator of the very dangers past which He would 
lead us. If w^e felt that God Himself were dis- 
mayed and sad in the presence of evils that He 
could not touch or remedy, we should turn to Him 
to help us as He best could. But while we feel 
that the very perplexities and sufferings come 
from His hand, how can we sincerely ask Him to 
guard us from things which He originates, or at 
least permits ? Why should they be there at all, 
if His concern is to help us past them ; or how 
can we think that He will lead us past them, 
when thej'- are part of His wise and awful design ? 



A Far-off Hope 345 

And thus one plunges again into the darkness. 
Can it indeed be that God, if He be all-embrac- 
ing, all- loving, all-powerful, can create or allow 
to arise within Himself something that is not 
Himself, alien to Him, hostile to Him? How 
can we believe in Him and trust Him, if this 
indeed be so ? 

And 3'et, looking upon that little flock to-day, 
I did indeed feel the presence of a kind and 
fatherly heart, of something that grieved for my 
pain, and that laid a hand upon my shoulder, 
saying, " Son, endure for a little ; be not so 
disquieted !'* 

March 8, 1891. 
Something — far-off, faint, joyful — cried out sud- 
denly in the depths of my spirit to-day. I felt — 
I can but express it by images, for it was too 
intangible for direct utterance — as a woman feels 
when her child's life quickens within her ; as 
a traveller's heart leaps up when, lost among 
interminable hills, he is hailed by a friendly voice ; 
as the river-water, thrust up into creeks and 
estuaries by the incoming tide, is suddenly freed 
by the ebb from that stealthy pressure, and flows 
gladly downwards ; as the dark garden-ground 



34^ The Altar Fire 

may feel when the frozen soil melts under the 
warm winds of spring, and the flower-roots begin 
to swell and shoot. 

Some such thrill it was that moved in the 
silence of the soul, showing that the darkness 
was alive. 

It came upon me as I walked among the soft 
airs to-day. It was no bodily lightness that 
moved me, for I was unstrung, listless, indolent ; 
but it was a sense that it was good to live, 
lonely and crushed as I was ; that there was 
something waiting for me which deserved to be 
approached with a patient expectation — that life 
was enriched, rather than made desolate by my 
grief and losses ; that I had treasure laid up in 
heaven. It came upon me as a fancy, but it 
was something better than that, that one or 
other of my dear ones had perhaps awaked 
in the other world, and had sent out a thought 
in search of me. I had often thought that if, 
when we are bom into this world of ours, our 
first years are so dumb and unperceptive, it 
might be even so in the world beyond ; that we 
are there allowed to rest a little, to sleep , and 
that has seemed to be perhaps the explanation 
why, in those first days of grief, when the 



A Far-off Hope 347 

mourner aches to have some communication with 
the vanished soul, and when a soul that has 
passed the bounds of life would be desiring 
too, one would think, to send vSome message 
back, why, I say, there is no voice nor hint 
nor sign. Perhaps the reason why our grief 
loses its sting after a season is that the soul we 
have loved does contrive to send some healing 
influence into the desolate heart. 

I know not ; but as I stood upon the hill-top 
to-day at evening, the setting sun gilding the 
cloud-edges, and touching the horizon with a 
delicate misty azure, my spirit did indeed awake 
with a smile, and a murmured word of hope. 

If I, who have lost everything that can en- 
rich and gladden life, can yet feel that inaliena- 
ble residue of hope, which just turns the bal- 
ance on the side of desiring still to live, it must 
be that life has something yet in store for me 
— I do not hope for love, I do not desire the 
old gift of expression again ; but there is some- 
thing to learn, to apprehend, to understand. I 
have learnt, I think, not to grasp at any- 
thing, not to clasp anything close to my heart ; 
the dream of possession has fled from me ; it 
will be enough if, as I learn the lesson, I 



348 The Altar Fire 

can ease a few burdens and help frail feet along 
the road. Duty, pleasure, work — strange names 
which we give to life, perversely separating the 
strands of the woven thread, they hold no 
meaning for me now — I do not expect to be 
free from suffering or from grief ; but I will no 
more distinguish them from other experiences 
saying, this is joyful and I will take all I can, or 
this is sad ^ and I will fly f 70771 it. I will take life 
whole, not divided into pieces and choose. My 
grief shall be like a silent chapel, lit with holy 
light, into which I shall often enter, and bend, 
not to frame mechanical pra3ers, but to submit 
myself to the still influence of the shrine. It 
is all my own now, a place into which no other 
curious eye can penetrate , a guarded sanctuary. 
My sorrow seems to have plucked me with a 
strong hand out of the whirling drift of cares, 
anxieties, ambitions, hopes ; and I see now that 
I could not have rescued myself; that I should 
have gone on battling with the current, catching 
at the river wrack, in the hopes of saving some- 
thing from the stream. Now I am face to face with 
God ; He saves me from myself. He strips my 
ragged vesture from me and I stand naked as He 
made me, unashamed, nestling close to His heart. 



Experience 349 

April 3, 1 89 1. 
A truth which has come home to me of late 
with a growing intensity is that we are sent into 
the world for the sake of experience, not neces- 
sarily for the sake of immediate happiness. I feel 
that the mistake we most of us make is in reach- 
ing out after a sense of satisfaction ; and even if 
we learn to do without that, we find it very diffi- 
cult to do without the sense of conscious growth. 
I say again that what we need and profit by is ex- 
perience, and sometimes that comes by suffering, 
helpless, drear}^, apparently meaningless suffer- 
ing. Yet when pain subsides, do we ever, does 
any one ever wish the suffering had not befallen 
us ? I think not. We feel better, stronger, more 
pure, more serene for it. Sometimes we get ex- 
perience b}^ living what seems to be an un- 
congenial life. One cannot solve the problem of 
happiness by simply trying to turn out of one's 
life whatever is uncongenial. Life cannot be 
made into an Karthl}^ Paradise, and it injures 
one's soul even to try. What we can turn out of 
our lives are the unfruitful, wasteful, conven- 
tional things ; and one can follow what seems 
the true life, though one may mistake even that 
sometimes. One of the commonest mistakes 



350 The Altar Fire 

nowadays is that so man}^ people are haunted 
with a vague sense that they ought to do good, as 
they say. The best that most people can do is to 
perform their work and their obvious duties well 
and conscientiously. 

If we realise that experience is what we need, 
and not necessarily happiness or contentment, the 
whole value of life is altered. We see then that 
we can get as much or even more out of the futile 
hour when we are held back from our chosen de- 
lightful work, even out of the dreary or terrified 
hour, when the sense of some irrevocable neglect, 
some base surrender that has marred our life, 
sinks burning into the soul, as a hot ember sinks 
smoking into a carpet. Those are the hours of 
life when we move and climb ; not the hours 
when we work, and eat, and laugh, and chat, and 
dine out with a sense of well-merited content. 

The value of life is not to be measured by 
length of days or success or tranquillity, but by 
the quality of our experience, and the degree in 
which we have profited by it. In the light of 
such a truth as this, art seems to fade away as 
just a pleasant amusement contrived by leisurely 
men for leisurely men. 

Then, further, one grows to feel that such easy 



Experience 351 

happiness as comes to us may be little more than 
the sweetening of the bitter medicine, just enough 
to give us courage and heart to live on ; that 
applies, of course, only to the commoner sorts of 
happiness, when one is busy and merry and self- 
satisfied. Some sorts of happiness, such as the 
best kind of affection, are parts of the larger ex- 
perience. 

Then, if we take hold of such experience in the 
right way, welcoming it as far as possible, not 
resisting it or trying to beguile it or forget it, we 
can get to the end of our probation quicker ; if, 
that is, we let the truth burn into us, instead of 
timidly shrinking away from it. 

This seems to me the essence of true religion ; 
the people who cling very close to particular 
creeds and particular beliefs seem to me to lose 
robustness ; it is like trying to go to heaven in a 
bath-chair ! It retards rather than nastens the 
apprehension of truth. Here lies, to ni}^ mind, 
the unreality of mystical books of devotion and 
piety, where one is instructed to practise a .servile 
sort of abasement, and to beg forgiveness for all 
one's noblest efforts and aspirations. Neither can 
I believe that the mystical absorption, inculcated 
by such books, in the human personalit}^, the 



352 The Altar Fire 

human sufferings of Christ, is wholesome, or 
natural, or even Christian. I cannot imagine 
that Christ Himself ever recommended such a 
frame of mind for an instant. What we want is a 
much simpler sort of Christianity. If a man had 
gone to Christ and expressed the desire to follow 
Him, Christ, I believe, would have wanted to 
know whether he loved others, whether he hated 
sin, whether he trusted God. He would not 
have asked him to recite the articles of his belief, 
and still less have suggested a mystical and 
emotional sort of passion for His own Person. 
At least I cannot believe it, and 1 see noth- 
ing in the Gospels which would lead me to 
believe it. 

In any case this belief in our experience being 
sent us for our far-off ultimate benefit has helped 
me greatly of late, and will, I am sure, help me 
still more. I do not practise it as I should, but 
I believe with all my heart that the truth lies 
there. 

After all, the truth is there ; it matters little 
that we should know it ; it is just so and not 
otherwise, and what we believe or do not believe 
about it, will not alter it ; and that is comfort 
too. 



Limitations 353 

April 2/\, 1 89 1. 

After I had gone up-stairs to bed last night, I 
found I had left a book downstairs which I was 
reading, and I went down again to recover it. 
I could not find any matches, and had some 
difficulty in getting hold of the book ; it 
is humiliating to think how much depends on 
sight. 

A whimsical idea struck me. Imagine a crea- 
ture, highly intellectual, but without the power 
of sight, brought up in darkness, receiving im- 
pressions solely by hearing and touch. Suppose 
him introduced into a room such as mine, and en- 
deavoring to form an impression of the kind of 
creature who inhabited it. Chairs, tables, even 
a musical instrument he could interpret ; but 
what would he make of a writing-table and its 
apparatus ? How would he guess at the use of 
a picture ? Strangest of all, what would he think 
of books ? He would find in my room hundreds 
of curious oblong objects, opening with a sort 
of hinge, and containing a series of lamincB of 
paper, which he would discern by his delicacy of 
touch to be oddly and obscurely dinted. Yet he 
would probably never be able to frame a guess 
that such objects could be used for the communi- 



354 The Altar Fire 

cation of intellectual ideas. What would lie sup- 
pose them to be ? 

The thought expanded before me. What if 
we ourselves, in this world of ours, which seems 
to us so complete, may really be creatures lacking 
some further sense, which would make all our 
difficulties plain ? We knock up against all sorts 
of unintelligible and inexplicable things, injustice, 
disease, pain, evil, of which we cannot divine the 
meaning or the use. Yet they are undoubtedly 
there ! Perhaps it is only that we cannot dis- 
cern the simplicity and the completeness of the 
heavenly house of which they are the furniture. 
Fanciful, of course ; but I am inclined to think 
not wholly fanciful. 

May lo, 1891. 

The question is this : Is there a kind of peace, 
of tranquillity, attainable in this world, which is 
proof against all calamities, sufferings, sorrows, 
losses, doubts? Is it attainable for one like 
myself, who is sensitive, apprehensive, highly 
strung, at once confident and timid, alive to im- 
pressions, liable to swift changes of mood? Or 
is it a mere matter of mental, moral, and physical 
health, depending on some balance of qualities, 



The Peace of God 355 

which may or may not belong to a man, a bal- 
ance which hundreds cannot attain to ? 

By this peace, I do not mean a chilly indif- 
ference, or a stoical fortitude. I do not mean 
the religious peace, such as I see in some people, 
which consists in holding as a certainty a scheme 
of things which I believe to be either untrue or 
uncertain — and about which, at all events, no 
certainty is logically and rationally possible. 

The peace I mean is a frame of mind which a 
man w^ould have, who loved passionately, who 
suffered acutely, who desired intensely, who feared 
greatly ; and yet for whom, behind love and pain, 
desire and fear, there existed a sort of inner cita- 
del, in which his soul was entrenched and im- 
pregnable. 

Such a security could not be a wholly rational 
thing, because reason cannot solve the enigmas 
with which w^e are confronted ; but it must not 
be an irrational institution either, because then it 
would be unattainable by a man of high intel- 
lectual gifts ; and the peace that I speak of ought 
to be consistent with any and every constitution 
— physical, moral, mental. It must be consistent 
with physical weakness, with a liability to strong 
temptations, with an incisive and penetrating in- 



35^ The Altar Fire 

tellectual quality ; its essence would be a sort of 
vital faitli, a unity of the individual heart with 
the heart of the world. It would rise like a rock 
above the sea, like a lighthouse, where a guarded 
flame would burn high and steady, however 
loudly the surges thundered below, upon the reefs, 
however fiercely the spray was dashed against 
the glasses of the casements. 

If it is attainable, then it is worth while to do 
and to suffer anything to attain it ; if it is not at- 
tainable, then the best thing is simply to be as 
insensible as possible, not to love, not to admire, 
not to desire ; for all these emotions are channels 
along which the bitter streams of suffering can 
flow. 

Prudence bids one close these channels ; mean- 
while a fainter and remoter voice, with sweet and 
thrilling accents, seems to cry to one not to be 
afraid, urges one to fling open every avenue 
by which impassioned experiences, uplifting 
thoughts, noble hopes, unselfish desires, may 
flow into the soul. 

This peace I have seen, or dream that I have 
seen, in the faces and voices of certain gracious 
spirits whom I have known. It seemed to 
consist in an unbounded natural gratitude, a 



The Track 357 

sweet simplicity, a childlike affectionateness, that 
recognised in suffering the joy of which it was 
the shadow, and in desperate catastrophes the 
hope that lay behind them. 

Such a peace must not be a surrender of any- 
thing, a feeble acquiescence ; it must be a strong 
and eager energy, a thirst for experience, a large 
tolerance, a desire to be convinced, a resolute 
patience. 

It is this and no less that I ask of God. 

Jime 6, 1 89 1. 
I had a beautiful walk to-day. I went a short 
way by train, and descending at a wayside 
station, found a little field-path, that led me past 
an old, high-gabled, mullioned farmhouse, with 
all the pleasant litter of country life about it. Then 
I passed along some low-lying meadows, deep in 
grass, where the birds sang sweetty, muffled 
in leaves. The fields there were all full of orchids, 
purple as wine, and the gold of buttercups floated 
on the top of the rich meadow-grass. Then I 
passed into a w^ood, and for a long time I walked 
in the green gloom of copses, in a forest stillness, 
only the tall trees rustling softly overhead, with 
doves cooing deep in the wood. Only once I 



358 The Altar Fire 

passed a house, a little cottage of grey stone, in 
a clearing, with an air of settled peace about it, 
that reminded me of an old sweet book that I 
used to read as a child, Pha?itastes, full of 
the mysterious romance of deep forests and 
haunted glades. I was overshadowed that after- 
noon with a sense of the ineffectiveness, the loneli- 
ness of my life, walking in a vain shadow ; but 
it melted out of my mind in the delicate beauty 
of the woodland, with its wild fragrances and 
cool airs, as when one chafes one's frozen hands 
before a leaping flame. They told me, those 
whispering groves, of the patient and tender love 
of the Father, and I drew very near His inmost 
heart in that gentle hour. The secret was to 
bear, to endure, not stoically nor stolidly, but 
with a quiet inclination of the will to sorrow and 
pain, that were not so bitter after all, when one 
abode faithfully in them. I became aware as I 
walked, that my heart was with the future after 
all. The beautiful dead past, I could be grateful 
for it, and not desire that it were mine again. I 
felt as a man might feel who is making his way 
across a wide moor. " Surely," he says to him- 
self, "the way lies here ; this ridge, that dingle 
mark the track • it lies there by the rushy pool, 



The Track 359 

and shows greener among the heather." So he 
says, persuading himself in vain that he has 
found the way ; but at last the track, plain and 
unmistakable, lies before him, and he loses no 
more time in imaginings, but goes straight for- 
ward. It was my sorrow, after all, that had 
shown me that I was in the true path. I had tried, 
in the old days, to fancy that I was homeward 
bound ; sometimes it was in the love of my dear 
ones, sometimes in the joy of art, sometimes in 
my chosen work ; and yet I knew in my heart all 
the time that I was but a leisurel}^ wanderer ; but 
now at last the destined road was clear ; I was 
no longer astray ; I was no longer inventing 
duties and acts for myself, but I had in very truth 
a note of the way. It was not the path I should 
have chosen in my blindness and easiness. But 
there could no longer be any doubt about it. 
How the false ambitions, the comfortable schemes, 
the trivial hopes melted away for me in that 
serene certainty ! What I had pursued before 
was the phantom of delight ; and though I still 
desired delight, with all the passion of my poor 
frail nature, yet I saw that not thus could the real 
joy of God be won. It was no longer a question 
of hope and disappointment, of sin and punish- 



360 The Altar Fire 

ment. It was something truer and stronger than 
that. The sin and the suffering alike had been 
the Will of God for me. I had never desired evil, 
though I had often falien into it ; but there was 
never a moment, when, if I could, I would not 
have been pure and unselfish and strong. That 
was a blessed hour for me, when, in place of the 
old luxurious delight, there came, flooding my 
heart, an intense and passionate desire that I 
might accept with a loving confidence whatever 
God might send ; my wearied body, my tired, 
anxious mind, were but a slender veil, rent and 
ruinous, that hung between God and my soul, 
through which I could discern the glory of His 
love. 

June 20, 1 891. 

It was on a warm, bright summer afternoon 
that I woke to the sense both of what I had lost 
and what I had gained. I had wandered out into 
the country, for in those days I had a great de- 
sire to be alone. I stood long beside a stile in the 
pastures, a little village below me, and the gables 
and chimneys of an old farmhouse stood up over 
wide fields of young waving wheat. A cuckoo 
fluted in an elm close by, and at the sound there 



The Heavenly Wisdom 361 

darted into my mind the memory, seen in an 
airy perspective, of innumerable happy and care- 
less days, spent in years long past, with eager 
and light-hearted companions, in whose smiling 
eyes and caressing motions was reflected one's 
own secret happiness. How full the world seemed 
of sweet surprises then ! To sit in an evening 
hour in some quiet, scented garden in the gather- 
ing dusk, and with the sense of a delicious 
mystery flashing from the light movements, the 
pensive eyes, the curve of arm or cheek of one's 
companion, how beautiful that was ! And yet 
how simple and natural it seemed. That was all 
over and gone, and a gulf seemed fixed between 
those days and these. And then there came first 
that sad and sweet regret, "the passion of the 
past," as Tennyson called it, that suddenly 
brimmed the eyes at the thought of the vanished 
days ; and there followed an intense desire to live 
in it once again, to have made more of it, a re- 
bellious longing to abandon oneself with a care- 
less disregard to the old rapture. 

Then on that mood, rising hke a star into the 
blue spaces of the evening, came the thought that 
the old days were not dead after all. That they 
were assuredly there, just as the future was there. 



362 The Altar Fire 

a true part of oneself, ineffaceable, eternal. And 
hard on the heels of that came another and a 
deeper intuition still, that not in such delights did 
the secret really rest ; what then was the secret ? 
It was surely this : that one must advance, led 
onward like a tottering child by the strong arm of 
God. That the new knowledge of suffering and 
sorrow was as beautiful as the old, and more so, 
and that instead of repining over the vanished 
joys, one might continue to rejoice in them and 
even rejoice in having lost them, for I seemed to 
perceive that one's aim was not, after all, to be 
lively, and joyful, and strong, but to be wiser, and 
larger-minded, and more hopeful, even at the ex- 
pense of delight. And then I saw that I would 
not really for any price part with the sad wisdom 
that I had reluctantly learnt, but that though the 
burden galled my shoulder, it held within it 
precious things which I could not throw away. 
And I had, too, the glad sense that even if in a 
childish petulance I would have laid my burden 
down and run off among the flowers, God was 
stronger than I, and would not suffer me to lose 
what I had gained. I might, I assuredly should, 
wish to be more free, more light of heart. But I 
seemed to myself like a woman that had borne a 



Winged Flowers 363 

child in suffering, and that no matter how restless 
and vexatious a care that child might prove to be, 
under no conceivable circumstances could she 
wish that she were barren and without the ex- 
perience of love. I felt indeed that I had ful- 
filled a part of my destiny, and that I might be 
glad that the suffering was behind me, even 
though it separated me from the careless days. 

I hope that in after days I may sometimes make 
a pilgrimage to the place where that wonderful 
truth thus dawned upon me. I have made a tab- 
ernacle there in my spirit, like the saints who saw 
the Lord transfigured before their eyes ; and to 
me it had been indeed a transfiguration, in which 
Love and sorrow and hope had been touched with 
an unearthly light of God. 

June 24, 1 891. 

Yesterday I was walking in a field-path through 
the meadows ; it was just that time in early sum- 
mer when the grass is rising, when flowers appear 
in little groups and bevies. There was a patch of 
speedwell, like a handful of sapphires cast down. 
Why does one's heart go out to certain flowers, 
flowers which seem to have some message for us 
if we could but read it ? A little way from the 
path I saw a group of absolutely unknown flower- 



364 The Altar Fire 

buds ; they were big, pale things, looking more 
like pods than flowers, growing on tall stems. I 
hate crushing down meadow-grass, but I could 
not resist my impulse of curiosity. I walked up to 
them, and just as I was going to bend down and 
look at them, lo and behold, all my flowers opened 
before my eyes as by a concerted signal, spread 
wings of the richest blue, and fluttered away before 
my eyes. They were nothing more than a com- 
pany of butterflies who, tired of play, had fallen 
asleep together with closed wings on the high 
grass-stems. 

There they had sate, like folded promises, hid- 
ing their azure sheen. Perhaps even now my 
hopes sit motionless and lifeless, in russet robes. 
Perhaps as I draw dully near, they may spring 
suddenly to life, and dance away in the sunshine, 
like fragments of the crystalline sky. 

July 8, 1891. 

I was in town last week for a few days on some 
necessary business, staying with old friends. Two 
or three people came in to dine one night, and 
afterwards, I hardly know how, I found myself 
talking with a curious openness to one of the 
guests, a woman whom I only slightly knew. 



Christian Science 365 

She is a very able and cultivated woman indeed, 
and it was a surprise to her friends when she 
lately became a Christian Scientist. When I have 
met her before, I have thought her a curiously 
guarded personality, appearing to live a vSecret and 
absorbing life of her own, impenetrable, and hold- 
ing up a shield of conventionality against the 
world. To-night she laid down her shield, and I 
saw the beating of a very pure and loving heart. 
The text of her talk was that we should never 
allow ourselves to believe in our limitations, be- 
cause they did not really exist. I found her, to 
my surprise, intensely emotional, with a passion- 
ate disbelief in and yet pity for all sorrow and 
suffering. She appealed to me to take up Chris- 
tian Science — " not to read or talk about it," she 
said ; " that is no use ; it is a life, not a theory; 
just accept it, and live by it, and you will find it 
true." 

But there is one part of me that rebels against 
the whole idea of Christian Science — my reason. 
I found, or thought I found, this woman to be 
wise both in head and heart, but not wise in mind. 
It seems to me that pain and sorrow and suffering 
are phenomena, just as real as other phenomena ; 
and that one does no good by denying them, but 



366 The Altar Fire 

only by accepting them, and living in them and 
through them. One might as truly, it seems, take 
upon oneself to deny that there was any such 
colour as red in the world, and tell people that 
whenever they saw or discerned any tinge of red, 
it was a delusion ; one can only use one's faculty 
of perception ; and if sorrow and suffering are a 
delusion, how do I know that love and joy are 
not delusions too ? They must stand and fall 
together. The reason why I believe that joy and 
love will in the end triumph, is because I have, 
because we all have, an instinctive desire for them, 
and a no less instinctive fear and dread of pain 
and sorrow. We may, indeed I believe with all 
my heart that we shall, emerge from them, but 
they are no less assuredly there. We triumph 
over them, when we learn to live bravely and 
courageously in them, when we do not seek to 
evade them or to hasten incredulously away from 
them. We fail, if we spend our time in repining, 
in regretting, in wishing the sweet and tranquil 
hours of untroubled joy back. We are not strong 
enough to desire the cup of suffering, even though 
we may know that we must drink it before we can 
discern the truth. But we may rejoice with a 
deep-seated joy, in the dark hours, that the Hand 



The Sorrow of Reuben 3^7 

of God is heavy upon us. When our vital ener- 
gies flag, when what we thought were our effec- 
tive powers languish and grow faint, then we 
may be glad because the Father is showing us 
His Will ; and then our sorrow is a fruitful sor- 
row, and labours, as the swelling seed labours in 
the sombre earth to thrust her slender hands up 
to the sun and air. . . . 

We two sate long in a corner of the quiet lamp- 
lit room, talking like old friends — once or twice 
our conversation was vSuspended by music, which 
fell like dew upon my parched heart ; and though 
I could not accept my fellow-pilgrim's thought, I 
could see in the glance of her eyes, full of pity 
and wonder, that we were indeed faring along the 
same strange road to the paradise of God. It did 
me good, that talk ; it helped me with a sense of 
sweet and tender fellowship ; and I had no doubt 
that God was teaching my friend in His own 
fatherly way, even as He was teaching me, and 
all of us. 

July 19, 1891. 

In one of the great windows of King's College 
Chapel, Cambridge, there is a panel the beauty of 
which used to strike me even as a boy. I used to 
wonder what further thing it meant. 



368 The Altar Fire 

It was, I believe — I may be wholly wrong — a 
picture of Reuben, looking in an agony of unavail- 
ing sorrow into the pit from which his brothers had 
drawn the boy they hated to sell him to the Mid- 
ianites. I cannot recollect the details plainly, and 
little remains but a memory of dim-lit azure and 
glowing scarlet. Kven though the pit was 
quaintly depicted as a draw-well, with a solid 
stone coping, the prett}^ absurdity of the thought 
only made one love the fancy better. But the 
figure of Reuben ! — even through an obscuring 
mist of crossing leads and window-bars and 
weather stains, there was a poignant agony 
wrought into the pose of the figure, with its 
clasped hands and strained gaze. 

I used to wonder, I say, what further thing it 
meant. For the deep spell of art is that it holds an 
intenser, a wider significance beneath its symbols 
than the mere figure, the mere action displays. 

What was the remorse of Reuben? It was that 
through his weakness, his complaisance, he had 
missed his chance of protecting what was secretly 
dear to him. He loved the boy, I think, or at all 
events he loved his father, and would not wil- 
lingly have hurt the old man. And now, even in 
his moment of yielding, of temporising, the worst 



The Sorrow of Reuben 369 

had happened, the child was gone, delivered over 
to what baseness of usage he could not bear to 
think. He himself had been a traitor to love and 
justice and light ; and yet, in the fruitful designs 
of God, that very traitorous deed was to blossom 
into the hope and glory of the race ; the deed 
itself was to be tenderly forgiven, and it was to 
open up, in the fulness of days, a prospect of 
greatness and prosperity to the tribe, to fling the 
seed of that mighty family in soil where it was to 
be infinitely enriched ; it was to open the door at 
last to a whole troop of great influences, marvel- 
lous events, large manifestations of God. 

Even so, in a parable, the figure came insist- 
ently before me all day, shining and fading upon 
the dark background of the mind. 

It was at the loss of my own soul that I had con- 
nived ; not at its death indeed — I had not plotted 
for that — but I had betrayed myself, I saw, year 
by year. I had despised the dreams and visions 
of the frail and ingenuous spirit ; and when it had 
come out trustfully to me in the wilderness, I had 
let it fall into the hands of the Midianites, the 
purloining band that trafiicked in all things, 
great and small, from the beast of the desert to 
the bodies and souls of men 



Z7^ The Altar Fire 

My soul had thus lain expiring before my eyes, 
and now God had taken it away from my faithless 
hands ; I saw at last that to save the soul one 
must assuredly lose it ; that if it was to grow 
strong and joyful and wise, it must be sold into 
servitude and dark afflictions. I saw that when I 
was too weak to save it, God had rent it from me, 
but that from the darkness of the pit it should 
fare forth upon a mighty voyage, and be made 
pure and faithful in a region undreamed of. 

To Reuben was left nothing but shame and .sor- 
row of heart and deceit to hide his sin ; unlike him, 
to me was given to see, beyond the desert and the 
dwindling line of camels, the groves and palaces 
of the land of wisdom, whither my sad soul was 
bound, lonely and dismayed. My heart went out to 
the day of reconciliation, when I should be forgiven 
with tears of joy for my owm faltering treachery, 
when my soul should be even grateful for my 
weakness, because from that very faithlessness, 
and from no other, should the new life be born. 

And thus with a peaceful hope that lay beyond 
shame and sorrow alike, as the shining plain lies 
out beyond the broken crags of the weary moun- 
tain, I gave myself utterly into the Hands of the 
Father of All. He was close beside me that day, 



A Death-Bed 371 

upholding, comforting, enriching me. Not hid- 
den in clouds from which the wrathful trumpet 
pealed, but walking with a tender joy, in a fra- 
grance of love, in the garden, at the cool of the day. 

August 18, 1891. 

Mr. is dead. He died yesterday, holding 

my hand. The end was quite sudden, though 
not unexpected. He had been much weaker of 
late, and he knew he could only live a short 
time. I have been much with him these last few 
days. He could not talk much, but there was a 
peaceful glory on his face which made me think 
of the Pilgrims in the Pilgrim's Progress whose 
call was so joyful. I never suspected how little 
desire he had to live ; but when he knew that his 
days were numbered, he allowed something of 
his delight to escape him, as a prisoner might 
who has borne his imprisonment bravely and sees 
his release draw nigh. He suffered a good deal, 
but each pang was to him only like the smiting 
off of chains. "I have had a very happy life," 
he said to me once with a smile. " looking 
back, it seems as though my later happiness had 
soaked backwards through the whole fabric, so 
that my joy in age has linked itself as by a 



3/2 The Altar Fire 

golden bridge to the old childish raptures. ' ' Then 
he looked curiously at me, with a half-smile, and 
added, " But happy as I have been, I find it in 
my heart to envy you. You hardly know how 
much you are to be envied. You have no more 
partings to fear ; your beautiful past is all folded 
up, to be creased and tarnished no more. You 
have had the love of wife and child — the one 
thing that I have missed. You have had fame 
too ; and you have drunk far deeper of the cup of 
suffering than I. I look upon you," he said 
laughingly, "as an old home-keeping captain, 
who has never done anything but garrison duty, 
might look upon a j^oung general who has carried 
through a great campaign and is covered with 
signs of honour." 

A little while after he aroused himself from a 
slumber to say, " You will be surprised to find 
yourself named in my will ; please don't have 
any scruples about accepting the inheritance. I 
want my niece, of course, to reign in my stead ; 
but if you outlive her, all is to go to you. I want 
you to live on in this place, to stand by her in 
her loneliness, as a brother by a sister. I want 
you to help and work for my dear people here, to 
be tender and careful for them. There are many 



A Death-Bed 373 

things that a man can do which a woman cannot ; 
and 3'our difficulty will be to find a hem for your 
life. Remember that there is no one who is in- 
jured by this — my niece is my only living rela- 
tion ; so accept this as your post in life ; it will 
not be a hard one. It is strange," he added, 
"that one should cling to such trifles; but I 
should like you to take my name, if you will ; 
and you must find some one to succeed you ; I 
wish it could have been your own boy, whom I 
have learnt to love." 

Miss came in shortly after, and Mr. 

said to her, "Yes, I have told him, and he con- 
sents. You do consent, do you not?" I said, 
"Yes, dear friend, of course I consent ; and con- 
sent gratefully, for you have given me a work in 

the world." And then I took Miss 's hand 

across the bed and kissed it ; the old man laid his 
hands upon our heads very tenderly and said, 
" Brother and sister to the end." 

I thought he was tired then, and made as if to 
leave him, but he said, "Do not go, my son." 
He lay smiling to himself, as if well pleased. 
Then a sudden change came over his face, and I 
saw that he was going ; we knelt beside him, and 
his last words were words of blessing. 



374 The Altar Fire 

October 12, 1891. 
This book has been my companion through 
some very strange, sad, terrible, and joyful hours ; 
my faithful companion, my silent friend, my true 
confessor. I have felt the need of utterance, the 
imperative instinct — the most primitive, the most 
childish of instincts — to tell my pains and hopes 
and dreams. I could not utter them, at the time, 
to another. I could not let the voice of my 
groaning reach the ears of any human being. 
Perhaps it would have been better for us both, if 
I could have said it all to my dearest Maud. But 
a sort of courtesy forbade my redoubling my mo- 
notonous lamentations ; her burden was heavy 
enough without that. I can hardly dignify it 
with the name of manliness or chivalry, because 
my frame of mind during those first months, 
when I lost the power of writing, was purely 
despicable ; and then, too, I did not want sym- 
pathy ; I wanted help ; and help no one but God 
could give me ; half my time was spent in a kind 
of dumb prayer to Him, that He would give me 
some sort of strength, some touch of courage ; for 
a helpless cowardice was the note of my frame of 
mind. Well, He has sent me strength — I recog- 
nise that now — not by lightening the load, but 



The Record 375 

by making it insupportably heavy and yet show- 
ing me that I had the strength to carry it ; I am 
still in the dark as to why I deserved so sore a 
punishment, and I cannot yet .see that the lone- 
Hness to which He has condemned me is the help 
that is proportioned to my need. But I walk no 
longer in a vain shadow. I have known affliction 
by the rod of His wrath. But the darkness in 
which I walk is not the darkness of thickening 
gloom, but the darkness of the breaking day. 

And then, too, I suppose that writing down 
my thoughts from day to day just eased the 
dumb pain of inaction, as the sick man shifts 
himself in his bed. Anyhow it is written, and 
it shall stand as a record. 

But now I shall write no more. I shall slip 
gratefull}^ and securely into the crowd of in- 
articulate and silent men and women, the vast 
majority, after all, of humanity. One, who like 
myself has the consciousness of receiving from 
moment to moment sharp and clear impressions 
from everything on earth, people, houses, fields, 
trees, clouds, is beset by a kind of torturing 
desire to shape it all in words and phrases. 
Why, I know not ! It is the desire, I suppose, 
to make some record of what seems so clear, 



376 The Altar Fire 

so distinct, so beautiful, so interesting. One 
cannot bear that one impression that seems so 
vivid and strange should be lost and perish. 
It is the artistic instinct, no doubt. And then 
one passes through the streets of a great city, 
and one becomes aware that of the thousands 
that pass one by, perhaps only one or two have 
the same instinct, and even they are bound to 
silence by circumstance, by lack of opportunity. 
The rest — life is enough for them ; hunger and 
thirst, love and strife, hope and fear, that is their 
daily meat. And life, I doubt not, is what we 
are set to taste. Of all those thousands, some 
few have the desire, and fewer still the power, to 
stand apart from the throng. These are not 
content with the humdrum life of earning a live- 
lihood, of forming ties, of passing the time as 
pleasantly as they can. They desire rather to be 
felt, to exercise influence, to mould others to 
their will, to use them for their convenience. I 
have had little temptation to do that, but my life 
has been poisoned at its source, I now discern, 
by the desire to differentiate myself from others. 
I could not walk faithfully in the procession ; I 
was as one who likes to sit securely in his win- 
dow above the street, noting all that he sees, 



The Way of Peace 377 

sketching all that strikes his fancy, hugging his 
pleasure at being apart from and superior to the 
ordinary run of mortals. Here lay my chiefest 
fault, that I could not bear a humble hand, but 
looked upon my wealth, my loving circle, as 
things that should fence me from the throng. I 
lived in a paradise of my own devising. 

But now I have put that all aside for ever. I will 
live the life of a learner ; I will be docile if I can. 
I might indeed have been stripped of everj^thing, 
bidden to join the humblest tribe of workers for 
daily bread. But God has spared my weakness, 
and I should be faithless indeed, if, seeing how 
intently His will has dealt with me, I did not 
recognise the clear guiding of His hand. He has 
given me a place and a quiet work to do ; these 
strange bereavements, one after another, have not 
hardened me. I feel the bonds of love for those 
whom I have lost drawn closer every hour. They 
are waiting for me, I am sure of that. It is not 
reason, it is not faith that prompts me ; it is a far 
deeper and stronger instinct, which I could not 
doubt if I would. What wonder if I look for- 
ward with an eager and ardent hope to death, I 
can conceive no more welcome tidings than the 
tidings that death was at hand. But I do not 



37^ The Altar Fire 

expect to die. My health of body is almost 
miraculously preserved. What I dare to hope is 
that I may learn by slow degrees to set the hap- 
piness of others above my own. I will listen for 
any sound of grief or discontent, and I will tr}^ to 
quiet it. I will spend my time and strength as 
freely as I can. That is a far-off hope. One 
cannot in a moment break through the self-con- 
sideration of a lifetime. But whereas, before, 
my dim sense that happiness could not be found 
by deliberately searching for ease made me half 
rebellious, half uncomfortable, I know now that it 
is true, and I will turn my back if I can upon that 
lonely and unsatisfied quest. I did indeed — I can 
honestly say that — desire with a passionate intent - 
ness the happiness of Maud and the children ; 
but I think I desired it most in order that the 
sunshine of their happiness should break in 
warmth and light upon myself. It will be hard 
enough — I can see that — not to labour still for the 
sake of the ultimate results upon my own peace 
of mind. But in my deepest heart I do not de- 
sire to do that, and I will not, God helping me. 

And so to-day, having read the whole record 
once again, with blinding tears, tears of love, I 
think, not tears of self-pity, I will close the book 



The Nearest Way 379 

and write no more. But I will not destroy it, be- 
cause it may help some soul that may come after 
me, into whose hands it may fall, to struggle on 
in the middle of sorrow and darkness. To him 
will I gladly reveal all that God has done 
for my soul. That poor, pitiful, shrinking soul, 
with all its faint desires after purity and 
nobleness and peace, all its self-wrought misery, 
all its unhappy failures, all its secret faults, its 
undiscerned weaknesses, I put humbly and con- 
fidently in the hands of the God who made me. I 
cannot amend myself, but I can at least co- 
operate with His loving Will. I can stumble 
onwards with my hand in His, like a timid child 
with a strong and loving father. I may wish to 
be lifted in His arms, I may wonder why He 
does not have more pity on my frailty. But I 
can believe that He is leading me home, and that 
His way is the best and nearest. 

THE KND. 



ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 

jd Impressio n. 

BESIDE Still Waters 

Uniform with the ♦' Upton Letters" 

A record of the sentiments, the changing opinions, and the 
quiet course of life of a young man whom an unexpected legacy 
has freed from the necessity of leading an active life in the world 
of affairs. The book aims to win men hack to the joys of peace- 
ful work, and simplicity, and friendship, and quiet helpfulness. 
It is, too, a protest against the rule or tyranny of convention, the 
appetite for luxury, power, excitement and strong sensation. 

gth Impression. 

Earlier Books by Mr. Benson 

From A College window 

*' iMr. Benson has written nothing equal to this mellow and 
full-flavored book. From cover to cover it is packed with per- 
sonality ; from phrase to phrase it reveals a thoroughly sincere 
and unaffected effort of self-expression ; full-orbed and four- 
square, it is a piece of true and simple literature." 

London Chronicle. 

loth hnpressioji. 



The Upton Letters 

"A piece of real literature of the highest order, beautiful 
and fragrant. To review tlie book adequately is impossible. . . . 
It is in truth a precious thing." — VVtek' s Survey. 

" A book that we have read and reread if only for the sake 
of its delicious flavor. There has been nothing so good of its 
kind since the Etchingham Letters. The letters are beautiful, 
quiet, and wise, dealing with deep things in a dignified way." 

Clirislian Register. 

Crown 8vo, Each, $1.25 Net. 



Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

New York London 



Shelburne Essays 

By Paul Elmer More 

4 vols. Crown octavo. 
Sold separately. Net, $1.25. (By mail $1.35) 

Contents 

First Series: A Hermit's Notes on Thoreau— The Soli- 
tude of Nathaniel Hawthorne — The Origins of Haw- 
thorne and Poe — The Influence of Emerson — The Spirit 
of Carlyle — The Science of English Verse — Arthur 
Symonds : The Two Illusions — The Epic of Ireland — 
Two Poets of the Irish Movement — Tolstoy ; or, The 
Ancient Feud between Philosophy and Art — The Re- 
ligious Ground of Humanitarianism. 

Second Series : Elizabethan Sonnets — Shakespeare's Son- 
nets — Lafcadio Hearn — The First Complete Edition of 
Hazlitt — Charles Lamb — Kipling and FitzGerald — 
George Crabbe — The Novels of George Meredith — 
Hawthorne: Looking before and after — Delphi and 
Greek Literature — Nemesis ; or, The Divine Envy. 

Third Series : The Correspondence of William Cowper — 
Whittier the Poet — The Centenary of Sainte-Beuve — 
. The Scotch Novels and Scotch History — Swinburne — 
Christina Rossetti — Why is Browning Popular? — A note 
on Byron's "Don Juan" — Laurence Sterne — J. Henry 
Shorthouse — The Quest. 

Fourth Series : The Vicar of Morwenstow— Fanny Bur- 
ney — A note on '* Daddy" Crisp — George Herbert — John 
Keats — Benjamin Franklin — Charles Lamb Again — Walt 
Whitman — William Blake — The Letters of Horace Wal- 
pole — The Theme of Paradise Lost. 



A Few Press Criticisms on 
Shelburne Essays 

** It is a pleasure to hail in Mr. More a genuine critic, for 
genuine critics in America in these days are uncommonly 
scarce. , . . We recommend, as a sample of his breadth, 
style, acumen, and power the essay on Tolstoy in the present 
volume. That represents criticism that has not merely 
a metropolitan but a world note, . . . One is thoroughly 
grateful to Mr. More for the high quality of his thought, his 
serious purpose, and his excellent style." — Harxtard Gradu- 
ates^ Magazine. 

'* We do not know of any one now writing who gives 
evidence of a better critical equipment than Mr. More. It 
is rare nowadays to find a writer so thoroughly familiar with 
both ancient and modern thought. It is this width of view, 
this intimate acquaintance with so much of the best that has 
been thought and said in the world, irrespective of local 
prejudice, that constitute Mr. More's strength as a critic. 
He has been able to form for himself a sound literary canon 
and a sane philosophy of life which constitute to our mind 
his peculiar merit as a critic." — Independent. 

'• He is familiar with classical, Oriental, and English 
literature; he uses a temperate, lucid, weighty^ and not 
ungraceful style ; he is aware of his best predecessors, and is 
apparently on the way to a set of philosophic principles 
which should lead him to a high and perhaps influential 
place in criticism. . . . We believe that we are in the 
presence of a critic who must be counted among the first who 
take literature and life for their theme." — London Speaker^ 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York London 



A Sterling Piece of Literary Work 

THE NOVELS OF HENRY JAMES 

BY 

ELISABETH LUTHER GARY 

Author of " The Rossettis," " William Morris," etc. 

With a Bibliography by Frederick A. King 

Crown octavo. With Portrait in Photogravure. 

Net, $1.25 (By mail, I1.35) 

All of Miss Gary's work in biography and criti= 
cism is marked by the distinct note of appre- 
ciation. In such a spirit she brings her reader 
into close touch with the mental and spiritual traits 
of each author, and leaves him with a deeper im- 
pression of the general influences of the subject 
chosen for study. In her latest volume, a critical 
interpretation of the novels of Mr. Henry James, 
she has a theme well suited to her powers of in- 
sight and illumination, and as a trained writer, a 
student of character and literature, Miss Gary is 
well equipped for her congenial task. 

The intention of the book is sufficiently indi- 
cated by its title. It is an attempt to fix more or 
less definitely the impression given by the work of 
Mr. James taken as a whole accomplishment and 
reviewed with reference to its complete effect. It 
is not so much a criticism as a comment upon 
the author's point of view and the inferences he 
draws from life. An exhaustive bibliography com- 
piled by Frederick A. King, arranged logically as 
well as chronologically, completes a remarkably in- 
teresting and well rounded piece of contemporary 
criticisro 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 



